Jesse
by LunaMoonbeams
Summary: So my dad's a werewolf. My stepmom shapeshifts into a coyote. My actual mom is human - a mundane, like me, though she did once have a crazy stalker who sent a lava monster after us. My name is Jesse Hauptman. My life is kind of crazy. But I'm cool with that.
1. Sunday on the Bridge With Trolls

A/N: Starts with Jesse's POV at the beginning of Fire Touched, then veers off wildly into an AU. Spoilers for the whole series throughout.

Disclaimer: All the characters belong to Patricia Briggs. I'm just borrowing them for a while.

* * *

Intro

So my dad's a werewolf. My stepmom turns into a coyote. My actual mom is human - a mundane, like me, although she does seem to have a supernatural power for attracting men, and she once had a stalker who sent a lava monster after us.

Members of my dad's pack are constantly filtering in and out of our house, and I sometimes answer the door for other supernatural creatures like vampires and the fae.

Which means that, according to everyone at school, the least freaky thing about me is my hair, which is constantly changing styles and colors depending on my moods. (Currently, it's bright red and dyed gold at the ends.)

My name is Jesse Hauptman.

My life is kind of crazy.

But I'm cool with that.

* * *

Chapter One

The thing about being an Alpha werewolf's daughter is that you don't grow up thinking it's weird.

Even when I was old enough to understand that mentioning my dad's ability to grow fur and fangs at will was a big no-no, I still remember thinking it was weird when I realized other people's dads _couldn't_ turn into giant wolves.

I guess it's kind of like being a celebrity's kid. You don't think about your dad being unusual or special to other people until you see how the rest of the world reacts to them. Even then, it's still kind of weird because to you, your dad is just...your dad.

My life got a lot weirder when the werewolves "came out," and my dad became the poster boy for pretty much all the werewolves in North America. He appears on national TV anytime the general public starts freaking out about their personal safety. I think he reassures them now. But at first, the announcement that werewolves exist just freaked people out. I lost a bunch of friends when everyone learned that my dad was the head of the Columbia Basin pack. A bunch of parents even yanked their kids out of school out because they didn't want them attending the same high school as me.

Right. Because I'm soooo dangerous. *eye roll*

I understand wanting to keep your kids safe, but being scared of having them around me is just dumb. I'm not a werewolf. I'm just related to one.

As dangerous as werewolves can be, it's not like they're mindless killing machines. They don't survive by feeding on people's blood, for one thing. Werewolves are at least half human, and they can still marry and make perfectly mundane babies with humans. As evidenced by me.

So the only thing you really need to be worried about is not pissing off a werewolf. True, their tempers run high, but this is actually pretty easy to avoid if you are not a total moron. When it comes to me, for example, all you have to do is avoid kidnapping me or causing me grievous bodily harm and you should be totally fine.

See? Easy.

Because seriously: the wolves have more important things to worry about than people who are just trying to go about their everyday lives.

Like right now, for instance. They are way more worried about an unidentified freakish monster terrorizing people on a bridge.

"What. Is. Happening," said Izzy.

Izzy and I were sitting on the couch in my dad's living room, staring wide-eyed at the Channel 5 news broadcast. Izzy had come over earlier with her mom, who'd been on a mission to sell Mercy essential oils and other things nobody really needs, and we were still hanging out when Mercy burst into my room and announced "Monster on Cable Bridge" before running off with my dad to fight said monster.

It had taken Izzy and me almost half an hour to find a local news station that was broadcasting the chaos. There were barricades at both ends of the bridge. In between was a mess of wrecked cars, dotted with members of the pack in both wolf and human form, attempting to stop the Monster on Cable Bridge from escaping and destroying the rest of the town.

"I think they're fighting the Hulk," I said.

In reality, it was some sort of fae, but I didn't know what kind. It was big and green and throwing Miatas, so Hulk worked for me.

"Can they beat it?" Izzy asked.

I shrugged, trying not to look too nervous. Izzy doesn't know as much about the pack as you'd expect, considering she's one of my best friends. (Well..one of my only friends.) Most of the people at school either avoid me or try to befriend me as a result of my association with the werewolves. Either way, they don't seem to have much interested in me as a person. Which sucks.

But Izzy's always just been my friend. We talk about normal teenage stuff: school, work, boys, parents. We don't talk about werewolves unless something's going on with the pack that's driving me nuts.

Or unless they're fighting a giant green monster on a bridge.

"I'm not sure there are really going to be any winners here," I said.

I'm pretty upbeat in general, but it is extremely nerve-wracking to watch high-definition aerial footage of people you know and love fighting a car-smashing monster that doesn't seem to be concerned about injuries sustained from claws, fangs, or guns. Werewolves are larger and stronger than normal wolves, and they heal insanely quickly, but they're not invincible. And right now, it didn't look like they were a match for the Hulk.

The hardest thing about having a dad who's a werewolf is knowing that one day he might find himself in a fight he can't win.

I've seen my dad and Mercy come up against enough life-threatening situations that I don't take my dad's safety for granted anymore. I try not to let on, because I know my dad doesn't want me to worry, but I'm grateful every time he comes home.

The camera angle on the TV switched, and our view was suddenly on the ground, much closer to the action. The camera zoomed in just in time to catch my dad in full werewolf form, leaping onto the back of the Hulk.

"O-m-g! Who is that? Is that your dad?" Izzy asked.

"Yep." Somehow my voice came out normally, but I was suddenly jangling with nerves.

My dad has gone out of his way to keep me from witnessing pack violence. I find most of his efforts to shelter me inconvenient or annoying at best - but missing out on the pack getting hurt is one thing I really don't mind. Everyone in the pack has been seriously injured at one time or another. But I had no desire to witness it, and I especially didn't want to watch them getting their bones broken live on television.

All in all, this was not my favorite Sunday afternoon activity ever.

Izzy tried to lighten the mood by crying, "Yeah, Mr. Hauptman! Go for the jugular!"

I joined in with a weak, "Go dad!" But really, the sight of my dad trying to bring down a creature that was apparently indifferent to a gigantic wolf gnawing on his skull was making me feel kind of sick.

Izzy caught the look on my face and reached over, giving me a brief hug. Then: "Is that _Mercy?"_

I tore my eyes away from my dad, and my heart sank as I spotted Mercy in the midst of the Hulk-induced chaos. In my head, I knew Mercy wouldn't be standing there in front of a monster unless there was a really good reason for her to be part of the fray. But the sight of both my dad and Mercy within fist-smashing distance of their opponent made me feel even sicker.

 _They always win - they always win - they always win,_ I told myself. So far, it was true. River monster, lava monster, vampires, rogue wolves, fae: Mercy and my dad had beaten them all, with various forms of help along the way. I watched and waited anxiously for one of them to come up with something miraculous.

"Is Mercy attacking the Hulk with a _stick?"_ Izzy said.

"Um...yes," I said, my heart sinking further. Then I frowned, leaning forward. That wasn't just a stick. It was Lugh's walking stick: an ancient fae artifact that, last I'd heard, Mercy had given away to one of the fae.

"Yeah, Mercy! Go for the balls!" Izzy cried, as Mercy gave the Hulk a good whack between the legs.

That got to me. I burst into half-nervous, half-hysterical giggles. Izzy joined in, and we watched, laughing inappropriately, as Mercy tried a few other whacks against the Hulk, none of which appeared to inconvenience it much.

"What is _with_ this monster?" Izzy demanded. "If I got whacked between the legs like that, I'd drop to the ground - and I only have lady parts!"

"Maybe it's a eunuch," I suggested. Somehow, this brought on another round of hysterical giggling.

Our laughter stopped abruptly when the Hulk reached back and ripped my dad off its head. Along with my dad came a giant chunk of the Hulk's hair and skin, followed by a lot of gushing, dark-green blood.

 _"Aughhh,"_ Izzy said. "Well, this just got super gross and terrifying."

I tried to say something, but it came out as a gurgly squeak instead. The troll had thrown my dad across the bridge. And he wasn't getting up.

Izzy put an arm around me and dropped her head onto my shoulder, giving me another squeeze.

The ground camera had moved much closer to the action now, but there were still enough things blocking the view that I'd lost sight of my dad after he hit the ground. I was so frantic for a glimpse of him that I had stopped paying attention to everything else on the bridge.

I might have missed the next bit entirely if Izzy hadn't sat up said, "Is that _Tad?"_

"What?" I said, momentarily distracted from worrying about my dad.

Tad couldn't be here. He was gone. Not off-to-college gone, like he had been for the last few years, but _gone_. As in, the fae had taken him.

A few months ago, when my mom's stalker sent the lava monster after us, Tad had helped Mercy and my dad defeat it. And by "helped," I mean "totally saved everyone's asses." The lava monster had destroyed Mercy's shop and turned our friend Joel into a lava-spewing tibicena in the process (though Joel was only a tibicena some of the time; sometimes he was still just Joel). It was only because of Tad that anyone survived.

However, winning the battle meant that Tad had revealed his full powers for the first time.

Which was a problem, because up until that point, the Gray Lords had assumed Tad was basically mundane.

Tad had a human mom, like me, and a fae dad. But unlike me - and apparently all of his fellow half-fae - Tad had inherited rare iron-kissed magic from his dad, in quantities that made him more powerful than any other half mundane in existence.

So the Gray Lords had taken him.

I wasn't supposed to know most of this. Mercy and my dad are committed to trying to protect from things that are dangerous for me to know, so they'd only told me bits and pieces. But I put the rest together for myself.

I've known Tad since I was nine years old. He's a genuinely awesome person, with a disarmingly friendly personality that makes him easy to be around and also very fun to flirt with. But I also know - at least in part thanks to retrospect - that his charming personality is part of what helps him disguise his true nature. Even people who have known him most of his life, like Mercy, were surprised to find out how much he'd been holding back when it came to his magic.

I wasn't.

I don't think Mercy would believe me if I told her so. I haven't spent nearly as much time around Tad as Mercy has. Also unlike Mercy, I'm not a coyote shifter with the ability to sense magic.

But I think Mercy forgets that Tad and I both know what it's like to have one mundane parent and one magical one. And it's because of that that I first began to suspect how much Tad was hiding his powers.

You see, Tad has never quite been able to commiserate with me over what it's like to have a supernatural father and no magical powers yourself. I can't automatically tell when someone's lying, like the werewolves can, but I've paid enough attention over the years that I've gotten to be a pretty good lie detector myself. And the more Tad and I talked about magic, the more I got the sense he was hiding something.

I'd never mentioned my hunch to him, of course. I figured if Tad was keeping his magic secret, he had good reason. I know what it's like to live with secrets.

I also know what it's like when the truth finally comes out.

In Tad's case, the consequences were a lot more dire than in mine. I lost friendships and classmates, but Tad lost his whole life. Ivy League scholarships don't exactly count for much when you've been kidnapped and taken to Fairyland against your will.

Or at least, I thought that's what had happened to Tad.

"Since when can Tad do _that_?" Izzy demanded.

The news had managed to get a clear shot of Tad molding a small piece of metal into a gigantic javelin, which he then handed to an inexplicably sopping-wet Darryl, who threw it at the Hulk.

"Um," I said. Izzy didn't know about Tad's true powers, or about him getting snatched by the Gray Lords. Although I wanted to, I didn't think it was my place to tell her. "Since now?" I ventured.

"But I thought the half-fae didn't have any powers," Izzy said, frowning.

"I think it's more that they don't have powers strong enough to matter to the Gray Lords."

"That looks like pretty crazy-awesome power to me."

I couldn't argue with this. Tad's weapons were the first things to have any effect on the Hulk whatsoever. Within mere minutes of Tad arriving on the scene, the Hulk went down. Izzy and I both watched in horrified fascination as Joel, in full lava-monster-tibicena form, finished it off.

And by _finished it off_ I mean _began to eat_.

 _"Augh,"_ Izzy said. "Do they have to show that?"

I decided to stop paying attention to Joel. The cameras had gotten close enough to the action now that I could see my dad. He was still lying on the ground, inert. Mercy was standing guard over him, walking stick in hand. I took this to mean that my dad was going to be all right. Mercy's better at keeping her cool in a crisis than anyone I know, but if something was seriously wrong with my dad, even she wouldn't be able to stand there looking so calm.

A lot of things happened over the next few minutes. Mercy tried to call Joel off eating the Hulk. Then a kid climbed stupidly over the barricade and approached Joel. For a moment, it looked like he was about to get eaten. But then he did some freaky fire voodoo instead, and Joel calmed down - to the point where he was no longer glowing and spitting lava.

"Whoa," Izzy said. "That is not a normal kid."

"No," I agreed.

"Fae?"

"I don't think so," I said slowly. I wasn't sure why; just a hunch. "Or if he is, I don't know why he's decided to disguise himself as a ten year old."

"If he's not fae, then what is he? One of the X-men?"

The X-men didn't really exist, of course. But sometimes I wondered if something like the X-men wasn't too far off from reality. We had werewolves, fae, and vampires, after all. Who knew what else was lurking out there?

"Could be," I said, mostly joking.

"I _so_ hope that means Wolverine really exists."

"Only if he actually looks like Hugh Jackman."

"You and your old men," Izzy said, rolling her eyes.

"Only Hugh Jackman," I insisted. I know he's kind of old - but whatever, he's still hot.

Izzy and I were distracted from our X-men speculation by the sudden appearance of Zee, Tad's father. He asked Mercy if the pack would provide sanctuary to the fire-taming, non-fae, non-X-men child.

Thanks to the ever-approaching TV cameras, we were able to actually hear this request, as well as the next bit, which involved Mercy raising her walking stick and declaring that my dad's pack would provide protection to anyone they deemed worthy. The walking stick gave a theatrical glow, as if to seal the bargain.

"Shit," I said, thinking how much trouble this could bring the pack.

"Badass," Izzy agreed.

By that point, I was 99.9% positive that my dad was all right. Even so, I didn't breathe easy until he suddenly sprang up from the ground and started moving around as though he hadn't just been thrown across a bridge and knocked unconscious by a Hulk monster.

I let out a sigh of relief and flopped back against the couch cushions. Izzy flopped with me.

"That was stressful," she said. "I think we need some chocolate."

"Agreed."

Lucky for us, Mercy likes to bake when she's stressed out. The freezer in the garage usually has some form of baked good in it. Today, Izzy and I struck gold with a tray of double-fudge brownies. We heated them up in the oven, so that by the time the first members of the pack arrived the house smelled amazing, and Izzy and I had eaten three brownies each.

This also meant that by the time my dad came in, I was in enough of a happy sugar coma that I was able to greet him normally, instead of crushing him in an _oh-my-God-I-almost-thought-you-died_ kind of embrace. I still hugged him, though. Dad gave me a tight squeeze, favoring one arm. That meant his other arm was injured, but I didn't comment on it. I was just glad he was in one piece.

Mercy hugged me, too, and invited Izzy to stay for the barbecue we were now hosting after the pack meeting.

Izzy went to the next room to call her mom and ask for a later ride. I decided to arrange the brownies artfully on a plate. Izzy and I had been eating them straight from the pan because, as Izzy insisted, "They taste gooier that way" - _gooey_ being Izzy's main requirement for brownies - but I figured nobody needed to know that, and we would look a lot more hospitable if we set the brownies out for general consumption.

All the members of the pack who'd been on the bridge arrived at about the same time as my dad and Mercy - along with Tad, Zee, and the mysterious ten-year-old, who I didn't believe for a second was as young as he looked. There was general hubbub as everyone started pouring into the house, which meant that Tad didn't see me right away. But I saw him. And what I saw was a little alarming.

Tad looked a lot older and grimmer than the last time I'd seen him. It could have just been that he was a little too thin and exhausted from fighting the Hulk, but I didn't think that was all. When Tad smiled, there was something missing from it.

What had the Gray Lords done to him?

And what was with the not-ten-year-old boy he and his father had gone to such lengths to protect?

"My mom is insane," Izzy declared, returning from her phone call. She looked frazzled, the way she only does when her mom brings up her Intrasity business. "She wanted to come _meet the pack_ ," Izzy whispered, horrified. In a house full of werewolves, whispering is pretty much pointless. But at least if you whisper, they'll usually pretend not to hear you. "I only convinced her to stay away by pointing out most of them had just defeated a bridge troll and would probably be too cranky to buy anything," Izzy went on.

"Bridge troll?" I echoed.

"That's what they're calling it on Twitter now. Apparently Mercy confirmed it."

"Huh," I said. So much for the Hulk. I glanced around the kitchen and realized that Tad, Zee, and the not-ten-year-old had disappeared. "Where'd they go?"

"Where'd who go?"

"Tad. And his father," I said. "They were just here."

 _"Iiiinteresting,"_ Izzy said. "I guess we'll find out what the deal is with the mini X-man after all."

And we did, kind of. Mostly we learned that mini-X-man would be staying with us for at least a day, per the terms of the sanctuary Mercy had offered him. Also staying with us would be Tad and Zee. We got most of this out of Ben, our resident British werewolf, whom Izzy and I both enjoyed at least in part due to his propensity for teaching us creative new swear words. We'd cornered him at the barbecue and squeezed as much information out of him as we could before he pleaded pack duties and excused himself.

"Isn't Zee supposed to be in Fairyland?" Izzy whispered, as Ben walked away. "And why is Tad here? Shouldn't he be at school?"

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe if we ever learn the whole deal about mini-X-man, it will all make sense."

Izzy pitched her voice even lower. "Do you think Zee's on the run from the Gray Lords?"

We were hanging out in one corner of the deck, a fair distance away from everybody else. Even so, I knew all the wolves could hear our conversation. So I just shrugged. Zee probably _was_ on the run from the Gray Lords, but I didn't want to speculate now, with most of the pack able to hear us. And I definitely didn't want to air my fears where I knew my dad might hear. Everyone tried to keep me in the dark as much as possible, but I got the feeling that something was brewing. Something that would bring the pack a lot more trouble than a bridge troll.

Izzy caught the look on my face and wisely dropped the topic. We'd hash it out at school tomorrow; even if Dad sent one of the wolves to babysit me, school was still the safest place to talk without fear of being overheard.

Tad appeared then, still looking exhausted. His face brightened at the sight of food, though. As he piled a couple plates high with burgers, chips, and a few token veggies, he received a few compliments and whacks on the back from Darryl, Warren, and Ben. Tad wasn't part of the pack hierarchy, so complimenting him for his efforts didn't cost anyone in the pack anything. Tad looked a little embarrassed, but mostly pleased at their enthusiasm.

Tad didn't see me until he turned around. I waved to catch his attention, and his face brightened again, breaking into a smile. Unless I was imagining things, it was the first genuine smile I'd seen on him all day.

Izzy elbowed me in the ribs. " _S_ _ome_ one's happy to see you," she said under her breath.

Okay. So maybe I wasn't imagining things. But I was definitely glad that Tad didn't have supersonic hearing.

"Jesse!" he said as he reached us, setting down both of his food-laden plates.

"Hey, Tad." Impulsively, I got up to give him a hug. Tad and I don't usually hug hello, but it had been a while since I'd seen him - and, frankly, he looked like he needed a hug.

He gave me a friendly squeeze back. As I pulled away, he took hold of one of my half-red, half-gold locks of hair and tugged. "Your hair's weird."

I rolled my eyes, secretly pleased. The weirdness of my hair was a long-running joke between me and Tad. "Your hair's a mess," I teased him, reaching up and flipping a few dark brown strands out of his eyes. "You need a haircut."

Tad shook his head, making his hair fall completely over his eyes. "I'm bringing emo back."

I laughed, and felt a little victorious when he broke into another smile. It was sad that seeing him smile - _really_ smile - felt like something to celebrate.

It occurred to me as we sat down that the reason his hair was so unruly was that he'd been trapped in Fairyland for the last seven weeks. Presumably without a barber. I wished I could ask him about that, but I couldn't with Izzy and the pack around.

Well - maybe I couldn't, anyway. I considered Tad a friend, but I wasn't sure what he thought of me. He was three years older than me, after all. And even if he did consider me a friend, did I really have the right to ask him about what had happened with the Gray Lords?

"I'm Izzy," Izzy said, sticking out her hand to greet him. "We've met, but you probably don't remember me."

"Ffure I do," Tad said, his mouth full of cheeseburger. He stuck out a free hand to shake hers. "You're Jesse's friend."

"Nicely deduced, Sherlock," I said, rolling my eyes at him.

Tad rolled his eyes back. "I do remember. Your mom brought your car into the shop one time," he said to Izzy.

"That is correct, sir," Izzy said, pleased.

Tad gave me a triumphant look, and I stuck out my tongue at him. Izzy glanced back and forth between us, looking amused. For some reason, Izzy's look annoyed me. Tad and I always flirted like this. There was nothing for her to look so amused about.

"Hungry?" I said, gesturing at Tad's multiple plates.

"I guess defeating a crazy evil troll will do that to you," Izzy mused.

Tad frowned. "The troll wasn't evil. Well, not exactly. He was... The whole mess shouldn't have happened." Tad shook his head, taking another bite of burger, then said, "One of the plates is for my dad. He didn't feel like socializing."

"Shocker," I said, trying to lighten the mood. Tad favored me with another smile, though this one didn't quite reach his eyes.

Izzy's phone chimed. "Crap. My mom's here," she said, checking the text. "I better head her off before she gets any ideas. See you tomorrow!" Izzy said a quick good-bye to me and Tad and hurried off.

"Ugh," I said, slumping over the table once she'd gone. Tad raised an eyebrow at me. I could only tell because it completely disappeared behind his hair. As opposed to the other eyebrow, which was only mostly covered by his hair. "I forgot tomorrow was Monday," I explained.

Tad looked amused for a second. But then his expression clouded. "I guess I couldn't have told you tomorrow was Monday, either."

"Losing track of things in your old age?" I teased. I didn't like seeing that dark look on his face. It made him seem a lot older than he really was. And it was a look I'd seen more and more often since his dad had been forced to go into hiding with the rest of the fae.

"Apparently," he said, and started in on his second burger.

I decided to switch tacks. "That was pretty impressive on the bridge today."

Tad gave a vague nod. "I'm just glad we got there in time. We cut it pretty close."

"I'm glad, too," I said quietly, hoping none of the pack were listening in.

Tad gave me a searching look. He seemed to catch my full meaning. "All of this is pretty hard on you, isn't it?"

"And on you," I countered, even more quietly.

He gave me a wry look. But something passed between us then: a spark of understanding that you can only get from knowing what it's like to have a parent in mortal peril. "I guess it's hard on all of us," he conceded.

For some reason, I found this slightly irritating. It was a diplomatic response - but I didn't want diplomatic responses from Tad. I wanted somebody to tell me the truth for once. The whole truth.

But since I wasn't sure I had a right to press Tad for the truth, I dropped the whole thing, and just kept him company until he'd finished his food.

"I better get some food to the old man before he decides to smite somebody," he said, licking the last of the potato chip grease off his fingers.

"I'd better get to work on school stuff," I said, making a face. "Homework waits for no woman!"

I followed Tad into the house and up the stairs. We split ways at the top. But before I'd taken two steps, I turned back and said, "Hey, Tad?"

"Hmm?" He turned around. He really did need a haircut; the urge to push his hair out of his eyes was driving me crazy.

"I'm glad you're back."

He gave me another genuine smile, and I got that warm little thrill of victory again. "Me too, Jesse."

He walked off, and I barricaded myself in my room, where I found myself humming unexpectedly as I conjugated Spanish verbs.


	2. Just Another Weird-Ass Monday

Chapter 2

Monday was not off to a great start.

I'd rolled out of bed with good intentions. Having guests in the house meant extra mouths to feed, so I decided to make myself useful and cook breakfast. I'd already finished a stack of French toast and was starting in on some eggs and bacon when my mom sauntered in, carrying a box of donuts.

"Mom!" I said, with some consternation. Though maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. After all, _u_ _nexpected_ was my mom's preferred way to visit, since it didn't give my dad a chance to tell her no. But it wasn't like her to drop by first thing on a Monday morning.

"Hey, sweetie." Mom set down the box of donuts and walked over to me, dropping a kiss on my head. "Smells yummy."

"Thanks," I said, trying not to sound too annoyed.

I'm not a huge fan of either my mom's motherly gestures or her compliments on my homemaking skills, since I've been more in the business of taking care of her the last few years than the other way around. But I do my best not to let my irritation show. It hurts her feelings, and only leads to fighting.

Her presence put me on edge, though. It's always awkward to have Mom here, in the house that she designed but no longer lives in. She's always commenting on the changes, and attributing anything she dislikes to Mercy's poor taste. Mom knows as well as anyone that the "redecorating" has a lot more to do with werewolves breaking things than it does with Mercy, but that doesn't stop her from trying to get her digs in. Which I don't appreciate, because A) I like Mercy, and B) if Mom really wanted to stay in this house, she could have.

"Dad's not here," I told her. She could have been here to see me, of course, but I got the feeling that wasn't the case.

I hadn't known Dad was gone when I woke up, but I knew it now. If he or Mercy had been here, they would have heard Mom's car approach, and they would have made an appearance by now.

Although surely the members of the pack left on guard duty were aware of her presence. _What happened to protecting our territory?_ I wondered grumpily. _Aren't they supposed to keep unwanted visitors out of the house?_

I felt a little guilty for thinking this. But the guilt immediately began to recede when my mom made an irritated noise and said, "Well, where _is_ he? It's Monday morning. Shouldn't he be here?"

"He had pack business," I said, flipping the bacon over. I didn't know this for sure, but with everything that had gone on yesterday, I suspected it was true.

"I see," Mom said, sounding critical. "Did he say when he'd be back?"

"No, Mother," I said, with a little more attitude than was probably necessary. "Believe it or not, Dad doesn't present me with an itemized itinerary of his whereabouts every morning. If you really want to know, you could ask-"

But I didn't get to finish that sentence. Because just then, someone snuck up behind me and grabbed my butt.

"What the-" I whirled around, enraged, to see the mini-X-men fire-tamer. His head head barely came up to my shoulder.

As a rule, I don't hit kids. But I do not allow anyone to grab my butt without permission, either. And despite the mini-X-man's appearance, I was pretty positive that I was not dealing with a child here. So I didn't hesitate before I whacked him across the face with my spatula.

It was extremely satisfying, for about ten seconds. But then Mom planted herself in front of me and started yelling at Kid Gropey-Hands, which left my brain free to process what had just happened. The gross feeling of being violated sank in really quickly.

Mini-X-man is lucky I'm not a werewolf, or I would have thrown him through a wall.

Darryl saved me the trouble by storming into the kitchen and picking Kid Groper up by the throat. Darryl didn't need to ask what had happened; Mom had been yelling loud enough that even if Darryl hadn't been a werewolf, he'd probably have heard the whole thing.

Darryl's presence didn't exactly bring instant resolution, though. Now we had a werewolf and a fire-caster in very close quarters, and nobody was around who could talk either of them down. Which meant that within a matter of seconds, Darryl's hand started to smoke and burn.

So you can imagine my relief when Mercy walked into the room. She paused, assessing the situation - then, in typical Mercy fashion, she strolled casually over to the Spudnuts box my mom had brought and picked out a doughnut.

I stayed pressed against the kitchen counter, well out of groping range, while Mercy diffused the situation. My dad came in at a theatrically appropriate moment and threatened to rip Fire Boy's arms off if he touched me again. Within a matter of minutes the little creepwad (whose name was apparently Aiden) was apologizing to everybody in the room.

He got through my mom, Darryl, Mercy, and my dad, and then he stopped. As though he thought he was done.

So I cleared my throat. Loudly.

Aiden gave me a look of loathing that pretty much summed up how I felt about him. "I'm very sorry you don't appreciate the honor I did you," he said. "I won't make that mistake again."

If I had fangs and claws and my father's temper, he would've been toast.

But since I'm me, the only thing I could do was inform him, in a very non-veiled manner, that I would gladly impale him if he ever tried something like that again.

Then the eggs started to burn.

I tossed the ruined batch, and then everyone mercifully dispersed, Mercy taking Aiden out of the house and into the backyard.

I finished cooking breakfast and fixed myself a plate, trying to calm down while I ate. But it's not exactly easy to bounce back after a scene like that first thing in the morning. A full belly helped a little. But no sooner had I finished eating and put the leftovers away than the doorbell rang.

The visitor was Uncle Mike. Generally speaking, I like Uncle Mike, but his appearance did not exactly lift my spirits. I hadn't seen him since the fae were forced onto the reservations. If I'd needed another clue that something massive was about to go down, this would have confirmed all my suspicions. I let him in and alerted Mercy to his presence, then ran upstairs to get ready for school before I was late.

I tried not to let the morning bother me. But I couldn't help thinking that if I'd just slept in, I could have avoided the whole mess altogether. My mom. Groper Boy. Uncle Mike.

Tomorrow, I decided, I'd skip cooking breakfast.

* * *

Warren was my bodyguard at school that day.

The pack members try to act like that's not what they're doing when they drive me to school, but duh, obviously it is. They can't follow me to class, which I'm grateful for, but somehow Dad got them permission to loiter on school grounds all day and listen in.

I do not entirely appreciate this. But I can't resent my dad for it, either. After all, there are some pretty scary creatures out there, and I did get kidnapped that one time.

Anyway, it could be worse. The wolves can't actually hear everything that goes on at school - there's too much overlapping noise. They're mostly just there so I can yell if anything alarming happens. And to make sure no one tries to ambush me on the way to or from school.

Which means school is still a pretty good cover for Izzy and me to talk, even when I have babysitters.

But we didn't get as much talking in that day as I'd hoped, because school was weird.

I've gotten more or less used to my fellow students treating me like a social pariah. Anytime something happens publicly with the werewolves, I have to put on extra mental armor to be able to face my classmates. That morning, I braced myself for the usual round of rude comments and dirty looks. After the pack's violent takedown of the troll yesterday, I half-expected to see parents yanking their kids out of school again.

However, the reaction was not what I expected.

Almost as soon as I walked in, someone made a wolf-howling noise. A few other students joined in. I put my head down and made a beeline for my locker. But as I walked by, one of the guys yelled, "Go Team Werewolf!" And another guy yelled, "Suck it, trolls!" I finally glanced over, mostly to see whether they were mocking me.

"I was at the bridge yesterday. That was sick!" one of them called.

I gave them a vague wave and kept walking.

Huh. They seemed to be...not mocking me.

There have always been people at school fascinated by the idea of werewolves, but I'd never gotten wolf-positive comments from any of those guys before.

And that was just the beginning. I had people coming up to me all day long, wanting to share their enthusiasm over the bridge troll defeat. Even my homeroom teacher, Ms. Pierpont, who'd given me sour looks since the day the werewolf announcement was made, gave me something akin to a smile.

It wasn't unpleasant, but it was a little unnerving. People who'd been treating me like a leper three days ago were now looking at me with genuine admiration in their eyes. Not admiration for me, of course. It was all for the pack. But still. Weird. I wondered how long this would last.

"I give it three days, tops," I said to Izzy at lunch.

"I don't know," Izzy said thoughtfully, licking yogurt off her spoon. "This could be a game changer. I don't think most people have thought about the wolves as public defenders before."

"That's because they've never _been_ public defenders before."

"That's not true. From what I hear, they defend the public all the time - they've just never done it, you know, publicly."

"Well, right now what they seem to be intent on defending is a little creepwad who can't keep his hands to himself. And also who doesn't seem like he needs our protection very much." I'd already filled Izzy in on the incident this morning. In true best friend fashion, she'd offered to bring about Aiden's demise in various creative ways.

Now, though, she squinched her mouth up to the side, looking thoughtful. "Yeah, that's true," she said slowly. "Kid Groper is pretty powerful. He took the fire out of your lava-dog and he almost burned Darryl's hand off."

"That's a slight exaggeration."

"Plus, he ruined your mom's tile. What exactly is the little pyro on the run from that he, Tad, and Zee can't take down on their own? It has to be the Gray Lords, right?"

"What else could it be?" But even as I said it, I got the nagging feeling that there _was_ something else. My dad and Mercy had dealt with the Gray Lords before. If the Gray Lords were really as powerful as all that, why would they be intimidated by my dad's pack? Werewolves had pack magic, but they couldn't spontaneously set things on fire. For example.

"You think it's something else," Izzy said, reading my expression correctly.

"I don't know. I feel like I don't have enough information to make an educated guess."

Izzy was about to respond when someone said, "Hey, um, Jesse?"

I turned to see a random freshman girl and her friends standing by our table.

"Hi," I said.

"Um, I..." - the girl got poked in the back by one of her friends - "I mean, _we_ just wanted to tell you we thought that what the wolves did on the bridge yesterday was cool. Like, really cool. It's awesome that they're defending the city. Well, the Tri-Cities. Anyway, we just wanted to say, um, thanks. To your dad and everyone."

"Thanks," I told them. "I'll tell my dad that. He'll appreciate it."

"Really? Cool!" The freshman girl went a bit red in the face, and she and her friends hurried off.

Izzy looked pleased. "What did I tell you? You already have a fan club."

"My _dad_ has a fan club."

"Po-tay-to, po-tah-to," Izzy said."Back to the point. You have more information on the supernatural than anybody else around here. So...what's out there that's more powerful than the Gray Lords?"

"Erm," I said. My first thought was the witches, but there really weren't very many of them anymore. Not enough to challenge the fae, anyway. Plus, the appearance of both Uncle Mike today and the troll yesterday suggested that whatever was going down, it was 100% fae related. "Underhill," I said suddenly. "The fae are in our world in the first place because Underhill kicked them out."

"But isn't Underhill, like...a place?"

"Yeah. But it's not a place like the Tri-Cities are a place. Or even like the fae reservation is a place. It's magical. It has a mind of its own. It has to, or why else would it have gotten feisty and kicked all the fae out?"

"That is a good point," Izzy said. "Also: creepy."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Underhill is the only thing I can think of that's more powerful than the Gray Lords."

"Hey, Jesse!" This time, we were interrupted by a group of underclassmen guys I didn't recognize. For some reason, they felt the need to reenact the events of yesterday for me. The narration included such choice descriptions as: "The wolves were all like GRAWWR, get off our bridge! But the troll was all like, RAHHH, the bridge is mine!"

Izzy finally shooed them away. But we lost a good chunk of our discussion time.

"Right," Izzy huffed. "Where were we? Oh, right, Underhill. Okay, so you think Sir-Gropes-A-Lot got tangled up with Underhill somehow?"

"Maybe," I said. "Probably." It was frustrating to know so much and yet have so little actual information. Mercy usually told me things if I asked, but it was trickier now, since she was all pack-bonded to my dad. Also, there hadn't been time to grill her yet.

"So what about Tad?"

"Huh?"

"Tad? You know, college guy currently sleeping down the hall from you? Likes to hide his ability to create gigantic javelin spears out of tiny pieces of metal?"

"What about him?"

Izzy rolled her eyes. "Don't be dense on purpose."

"I'm not being dense on purpose," I said. "You need to specify what you want me to comment on regarding Tad."

"Okay, multiple questions. First: how long have you known he could do the metal bendy stuff? Second: how long has been all Flirty McFlirting with you? Third: Do you think he and Zee are on the run from the same thing as Kid Groper? Fourth: why did they team up with Kid Groper in the first place? Fifth-"

"I think four is enough to start with," I said, mostly because I could tell that _fifth_ was going to be something I didn't like.

"Fifth: have you run into Tad wearing nothing but his boxer shorts yet?"

I groaned. "Izzy, _why_ would Tad be walking around my house wearing nothing but his boxers, and also why would you ask about that?"

"I refer you to question two."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, I will answer your questions in sequence if you promise not to ask about Tad in his boxers again."

"I promise nothing."

I glared at her, but she was unimpressed.

"If you don't answer, I will be forced to speculate."

"Fine," I said. One of the benefits of being an Alpha werewolf's daughter, as opposed to an actual Alpha werewolf, is that it doesn't matter if I occasionally lose a staring contest. "Okay, first: I never saw Tad in action until yesterday, but I guessed about his magic a long time ago." I dropped my voice, even though in the noisy cafeteria I doubted anyone could overhear us. "And the Gray Lords know what he can do now, too. Which means they're interested in him. Which...isn't good, to say the least.

"Second: We've always flirted, but it doesn't mean anything.

"Third: I have no idea what's going on with Tad and Zee. I haven't heard anything about them in weeks. I didn't even know they were back until yesterday. They-"

"What do you mean, you didn't know _they_ were back?"

Crap.

Izzy, like everyone else, had assumed Tad was away at college until yesterday.

I really wasn't supposed to be sharing so much with her, but I hated keeping my best friend in the dark - in the same way I hated when my dad and Mercy kept _me_ in the dark. The more public everything got with the wolves and the fae, the less I was convinced it mattered to keep things close to the vest. At least when it came to Izzy.

So I lowered my voice again and said, "You know how Mercy's workshop was destroyed a couple months ago? Well, Tad was there. He helped fight off the lava monster that eventually became Joel, and in the process he showed what he could do for the first time. That was when the Gray Lords got interested in him. He's been gone since then. In Fairyland."

Izzy threw up her hands. "You see why I have to interrogate you? Always with the secret keeping."

"Sorry, Iz. I wanted to tell you, but it's Tad's business. I didn't think I had a right to-"

"Yeah, yeah," Izzy said, waving this away. She gets why I have to keep things hidden. But also, she just rarely gets mad about things. Which I appreciate after growing up in a house full of short-tempered werewolves. "Okay, so: four?" Izzy prompted.

I tried to remember what question four was. "Oh, right," I said. "Kid Groper. Um...I'm not sure how he ended up with Tad and Zee. But they seem to feel like they owe him. Which is unusual for Zee, to say the least."

"Hmm," Izzy said. She looked like she was about to start another line of speculation, but we were interrupted by the bell. "Damn. Okay, you should definitely ask Tad about all this tonight. We need more intel."

I shook my head as we gathered up our stuff. "Izzy, I can't just ask Tad what he and his father are on the run from. Whatever happened...it can't be good." And I didn't mean that in a general sense. I meant it in the specific sense of _I know what it's like to be taken somewhere against your will and held captive, and I am the last person in the world who's going to interrogate somebody about that._

Izzy caught the tone in my voice, and gave me a sympathetic look. She knew exactly what I was talking about. "Maybe you really should ask him, then," she said thoughtfully. "What if he needs to talk about it?"

"Then I'm sure he can pick his own person to confide in."

"Humph," Izzy said as we filed out of the cafeteria. We stopped by our lockers to swap our lunch bags for books. "I still think you should try, Jess. There are no other young people in your dad's house - and if you ask me, Tad looked like he needed a friend."

"Tad has his dad. And Mercy."

"That's not the same."

"Maybe not, but Tad's an adult. I'm-"

"Also an adult," Izzy pointed out. This was true; I'd recently turned eighteen.

"I was going to say _still in high school_. That makes a difference."

"I think it makes way more of a difference that you know the whole truth about him. How many of Tad's college friends can say that? More to the point, how many of his college friends are _here_?"

Izzy made some good points. But I think she was overestimating how well I really knew Tad. It was one thing to goof off and flirt with him. But it was another thing to go prying into his emotions. There were whole parts of Tad I got the sense he didn't want anybody to touch. "I'll see if an opportunity comes up," I said, to appease Izzy.

The minute bell rang, and Izzy and I split ways. I was halfway down the hall when Izzy turned around and yelled, "FIVE?"

"NO!" I yelled back.

People stared, but I was used to that.

* * *

When Warren dropped me off after school, Dad and Mercy were gone. So was my mom. Warren had explained on the way home that my mom was off to the Bahamas - for safety reasons, apparently - and Dad was off for a clandestine meeting with Mercy. Neither piece of information told me anything except that whatever sort of trouble was brewing had already begun to spill over.

I needed to think about all this. I grabbed an apple and sliced myself some cheese in the kitchen for brain food, then retreated to my room.

The more I thought about it, the more brilliant I felt to have come up with the notion of Underhill at the lunch table. But I wasn't really sure how much I could extrapolate from there. I decided to start with the facts I actually knew. To help organize my thoughts, I jotted down the following list while I munched on my apple:

1\. Tad & Z taken by Gray Lords b/c of Tad's power - now on run.

2\. Kid Groper also on run - allied w/Tad & Z

3\. Troll bridge attack (how/why?)

4\. Uncle Mike cameo = more fae involved than Tad, Z & Gray Lds.

5\. Mercy's sanctuary deal = pack in danger. My mom, et al = potential targets

I stopped at #5 and considered the implications.

Mercy had made her declaration on the bridge yesterday, and today my dad was packing my mom off to the Bahamas because of a threatening note she'd gotten from the fae.

I had expected trouble, but this was escalating pretty quickly. It occurred to me that unless Mercy and my dad could diffuse this situation as quickly as they'd diffused the situation in the kitchen this morning, we were probably in for another direct attack on the house at some point.

It wouldn't be the first time. But the first time it had happened, I'd been kidnapped. I wasn't about to let that happen again.

I paused and took a mental inventory of all the weapons in the house that I knew how to use. Mercy had showed me how to fire one of her guns not too long ago. In case diplomacy failed, I decided I'd better make sure it was still stored where I thought it was. Now seemed as good a time as any.

I kept my mind on the list as I walked down the hall. How _did_ Tad, Zee, and Groper McGee get to be such good friends? I wondered. Zee didn't have any friends besides Mercy, as far as I could tell. And he and Tad had been locked away for the last few weeks. They must have all met while they were under the influence of the Gray Lords.

I supposed that made sense. Bonding in captivity was as good a reason to befriend someone as any.

But then why had Kid Groper been snatched by the Gray Lords? For his magic? That was why they'd taken Tad, after all. Was the little creepwad half-human, too? Or was there just something about his fire magic the Gray Lords wanted?

I didn't know enough about the nature of fae magic to know whether fire wielding was as rare as metal magic. Probably not, I guessed, since metal made most fae sick, and as far as I knew there was no such thing as a fire allergy. Unless you counted being flammable as a fire allergy.

Anyway.

There had to be something unique about Aiden, or the Gray Lords wouldn't have bothered with him.

I reached the room where Mercy's gun was usually stored, and was relieved to find that both the gun and the ammunition were where I thought they'd be. Well, that was one less thing to worry about if shit hit the fan, anyway.

I went back to my room and flopped on my bed, pondering the problem of Kid Groper. Maybe Underhill and Kid Groper were connected in some way, though I didn't understand how.

I'd been sprawled on my bed for about a minute when there was a knock on the door. "Come in," I said, because I didn't feel like getting up.

It was Tad. I sat up. "Hey!" I said, running a hand through my hair. It probably couldn't have gotten too messed up in sixty seconds, but you never knew.

"Hey. Can I talk to you for a sec?"

"Sure."

Tad shut the door and grabbed my desk chair, flipping it around and sitting down on it backwards. I crossed my legs, reflecting on how lame it was to live in a house where most of the other occupants could hear what you were saying, no matter where you were. It really took the thrill out of being alone with a guy in your room. Even if the guy was just Tad.

"So," Tad said, drumming on the back of the chair. "I heard about what happened this morning with Aiden."

"Oh, you mean Kid Gropes-A-Lot? Yeah, that was fun for the whole family."

Tad got a look that suggested he didn't exactly appreciate this description, but that he couldn't really argue with it, either. "Aiden's...not exactly from this time."

"Yeah, I gathered that from the way he told my dad he thought I was 'but a servant.' Although personally, I don't think being born way in the past excuses you from being a decent person. Because I'm pretty sure there were decent men in all time periods who didn't go around randomly grabbing women's butts to prove a point. And the fact that Fire Boy groped me because he thought I was lower class, or whatever, just makes it worse. Like-what, first you make the servants do all the work and then you violate them for their trouble? Just so you can prove you're dominant or virile or whatever? Right, because that's sooooo impressive. Look at you, going for the weak ones who can't fight back! That shows you're a real _stud._ "

Tad's lips pressed into a thin line. For a moment, he looked very grave and a little disapproving. I was about to keep ranting when I realized his lips were twitching.

I stared at him. "Excuse me. Are you _laughing_?"

Tad shook his head. But I could tell from the way he was holding his mouth that he'd only shaken his head because he couldn't speak.

"This is not funny!" I said, and threw a pillow at him.

Tad couldn't hold it in anymore; he burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," he said, catching the pillow. He was still laughing helplessly. "I know it's not funny. It's just... _you_."

"What do you mean, _me_?" I said, crossing my arms.

He shook his head. "I don't...I can't explain it. You're just so... _you_ , Jesse."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, that clears things up."

He tossed the pillow back. "I told you I couldn't explain it."

"Fine. What did you come here to explain, then? _Don't_ tell me you just came here to defend Kid Groper."

"No. Well, not entirely," he said, sobering up a little. Then he rubbed his eyes, looking suddenly old and tired again. "I can't defend what he did, Jesse. But I do think there are a few things you ought to know about him."

"All right," I said. I wasn't especially interested in hearing more about Aiden. But if Mercy and my dad had determined he was worth continuing to protect, I figured there must be something worth listening to.

Also, Izzy would kill me if I said no.

"Okay," Tad said. Whatever knowledge he had of Aiden must be weighing on him, because the dark look on his face now made me almost sorry I'd told him to stop laughing. "Aiden's been trapped in Underhill since the ninth century," he began. "He was only human, at first. But Underhill gave him fire magic. There were others, too - humans Underhill granted elemental powers to. But every one of them is dead now except for Aiden. And he hasn't been in our world for two millennia."

I felt briefly like a genius for having figured out that there was some connection between Underhill and Aiden, despite nobody telling me a damn thing. Then I asked: "How did you meet him, then?"

"When Aiden escaped Underhill, he was taken by the Gray Lords," Tad said, his expression growing darker. He sighed, rubbing the heel of his hand against his forehead. Evidently, he'd had too many conversations like this one today. "Aiden helped me and Dad escape. We had help from others, too - but there was a moment when we almost got caught again. Aiden could have gone on and saved himself, but he didn't. He came back for us."

"So now you owe him."

"Yes. But it's not just that. He...Underhill's not a safe place, Jesse. Whatever I went through at the hands of the Gray Lords is nothing compared to what he's been through. And now he's two thousand years old, trapped in the body of a ten-year-old, and he doesn't understand anything about the modern world. And the Gray Lords are hunting him."

I nodded. "I see," I said slowly. "I get why you're all helping him. I do." Underhill and the Gray Lords had been screwing with people's lives - and particularly when it came to what they'd done to Tad and Zee, I thought it was high time that they all go screw themselves instead. "But funnily enough, that doesn't make me feel less violated."

Tad looked pained. "I'm sorry. I wish I'd been there. I could have stopped it all before it started. I-"

"He's not your responsibility, Tad," I said quietly. "He's two thousand years old. He can answer for his own actions."

"Yeah," Tad said, rubbing his eyes again. "Well, anyway...I just thought you ought to know. He screwed up with you, but he does have some redeeming qualities."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said.

Tad nodded and got up, flipping my desk chair around to put it back in his place.

"Wait," I said. Tad was looking all weary again. I didn't like the thought of him leaving looking so exhausted. Maybe I could at least make him laugh again. Unfortunately, I didn't have any jokes in mind.

Actually, I didn't have anything in mind.

But now Tad was standing there looking at me expectantly. "You said you didn't entirely come to defend Kid Grope-Hands. Did you come for any other reason?" I said, feeling lame.

"Oh." Tad scratched his head. "Um...just to make sure you were all right, I guess. Considering everything that's going on."

I nodded. "Yeah I'm as all right as I can be, considering. What about you?"

"About the same," he said. But there was so little truth behind the smile he gave me that I refused to accept this answer. I had to do _something_.

I hopped off the bed and walked over to my desk, rummaging through one of the drawers. "Well, I think there's one thing we can definitely prove upon, considering the circumstances."

"What's that?" he said, his eyebrows disappearing behind his overlong hair.

I shut the drawer, and held up the scissors I'd retrieved. "We can do something about your hair."


	3. Beauty School Knockout

Chapter Three

I am not an expert hair cutter.

In fact, I was a first-time hair cutter. But I had Tad's permission and a strong desire to free his forehead from its emo hair prison, so I figured hey, how hard could it be?

We set up a chair in one of the upstairs bathrooms. I decided it would be easier to clean up in here than in my room, and also that it would be convenient to be near a sink. You were supposed to wet hair before you cut it, right?

My dad kept a collection of combs, toothbrushes, and other toiletries in the hall closet for whenever we had impromptu guests. Which was often. I grabbed a comb and ran it under the tap before working through Tad's hair, which was a ridiculous mess. In fact, in the time it took me to grab the comb and come back, I swear it had gotten messier.

But oh well. All the more reason to set to work.

I kept wetting the comb and running it through Tad's dark hair until the strands were damp, straight-ish, and as tangle-free as I could manage. As I set the comb down and picked up the scissors, I caught sight of Tad in the mirror and realized that his eyes were closed. Some of the weariness in his expression had fallen away. There were still dark circles under his eyes, but he no longer looked about a thousand years old. _Good_.

I felt a little nervous as I turned back and assessed the layers of his hair. Someone had done a good job on it at some point. I was totally about to ruin that.

"Just don't cut my ear off," Tad said. He'd opened his eyes and caught sight of my expression in the mirror.

"As if I could miss them," I said, giving one of his ears a tug.

Tad smiled - a real smile.

Here's the thing about Tad: he's not conventionally attractive. His ears stick out too far, and his nose is all flat and smushed like he's been in one too many boxing matches. But there's still something about him that I, personally, would call attractive. Something that makes you want to pay attention to him.

He has _charisma_.

He wasn't putting out the charisma right now, but maybe because I knew it was there, I felt like it was something I could still sense in him. It made him easy to be around. It also helped that right now he looked at ease. In fact, he looked more relaxed than I'd seen him in...well, maybe ever. Tad and I didn't exactly get a lot of quality chill-time together. I liked seeing him like this, though. Almost more than when he was putting on the charm.

"Well?" Tad said.

"Right," I said. I'd better dive in before I lost my nerve.

I picked up what looked like an unimportant lock of hair in the back and went _snip_. Then I went in for a couple more. _Snip, snip_. I figured if I started from the bottom and worked my way up, I'd figure out some sort of technique before I got to the bits people actually paid attention to. You know...hopefully.

I'd always imagined that cutting girls' hair would be harder, because there's usually so much more of it - and also girls have a tendency to freak out if you cut it too short. But I decided as I went along that cutting guys' hair was actually way trickier. There was only so much room for error before you got all the way to the scalp. And I wasn't exactly using fine-snip barber's scissors or whatever.

I did my best, though, working my way methodically around Tad's head. It was actually kind of relaxing once I got into the groove. There was something soothing about running my fingers through the soft, thick hair and snipping off the unruly bits before moving on to the next section.

Midway through, I realized Tad had closed his eyes again. He wasn't smiling, exactly, but he looked restful. A little thrill of triumph went through me. I started humming as I worked my way toward the front, finally ready to face off against the bits that had been driving me bonkers. As I positioned myself in front of Tad to attack his emo bangs, I realized he was tapping his fingers against his leg in time with the song I was humming. I couldn't keep a stupid grin off my face as I went in for the locks that were currently holding his eyebrows hostage.

I emerged victorious.

I walked back around, taking a final evaluation of my handiwork. The haircut didn't look totally professional, but it didn't look like somebody had just randomly hacked at it with a pair of scissors, either. It looked basically the same as it had before, only shorter and more intentional. I couldn't resist running my hand through it one more time. At this, Tad let out a sigh. It wasn't heavy or dark, like the sighs he'd been letting out during the Tale of Kid Groper. It sounded...content.

Tingles shot through my fingers and ran all the way up my arm, then all the way over the rest of me. I stepped away, confused. I had to clear my throat before I could get out, "All done."

Tad opened his eyes. He seemed reluctant for it to be over. I guessed I was, too. Although that was kind of weird, wasn't it? It was just a haircut.

Tad looked in the mirror, swiveling his head from side to side to see the result. He said something in German I didn't understand, but I assumed it was complimentary because it didn't sound like any of the curse words I'd heard him use from time to time. "Nice job, Jesse."

"Thanks. Feel free to call anytime you have an emo hair emergency."

Tad met my gaze through the mirror. "Or the next time I need to dye my hair for Gryffindor spirit week."

I rolled my eyes. My current red-and-gold hair combo hadn't been inspired by Harry Potter. But I didn't mind the association.

"I'll clean this up," Tad said, standing and gesturing at all the hair clippings on the floor.

"You don't have to."

"You didn't have to cut my hair, either."

"It was more like a public service."

Now Tad rolled his eyes. "Really. I don't mind."

"All right," I said. "Well...thanks."

Then, because it seemed weird to linger while he cleaned up his own hair, I retreated to my room.

I flopped on my bed, but I didn't reach for my list. I didn't try to make any clever deductions, either. I just stared at the ceiling and played everything over in my head again.

"What. Was. That?" I demanded.

The ceiling had no opinions.

Izzy would have had lots of opinions. But I decided I didn't want her input on this yet. Or possibly ever. After all, it was probably nothing. I mean...it was _Tad_. And he was older. And I didn't know very much about his life since he'd gone off to college. And...

I shut my eyes and thought of that last moment before it ended. Right before I'd stepped away in confusion.

The tingles started in my fingertips and ran all the way over me again.

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a shrill alarm and the smell of something burning. I barely had time to turn on my bedside lamp before Warren burst into my room and threw the window wide open.

"Sorry, Jesse. Minor fire incident."

"Wha?" I said blearily. "What d'you mean, fire incident?"

"I mean Aiden set his mattress on fire accidentally."

That got my attention. "How'd he set it on fire _accidentally_?"

"Well, he was sleeping when he did it."

I blinked, staring at Warren. "He sets things on fire in his _sleep_?"

"It's all right. Mary Jo took care of it."

I wanted to make a sarcastic comment, but I was not entirely awake yet, so the clever words wouldn't come.

Warren turned his head toward the door, suddenly on alert. "Boss is back," he said. "Don't worry. We've got it under control." He left, closing the door gently behind him.

I flopped back against my pillows. "Got what under control, the mattress fire or nocturnal pyromania?" I said grumpily.

Oh, sure. Now the clever words came.

The shrill beeping suddenly stopped. I heard a car pull into the driveway - the one Warren had heard a minute earlier. My dad and Mercy were back.

I laid in bed for a few minutes, debating the relative merits of getting out of bed and pumping Mercy for information. There was a lot going on that I didn't know about, and sometimes late-night chats were more fruitful than trying to squeeze details from people in the midst of a busy day.

But then again, today had been a really weird day. I might not have gone off to face a bunch of creepy and mysterious fae tonight, but between my mom, Aiden, school, and an unnecessarily disconcerting haircut experience, I'd had about as much as I could stand. Maybe it would be best to sleep on all this until tomorrow.

I was just about to turn off my bedside lamp when there came a soft knock on my door. "Yeah?" I said, and the door eased open. It was my dad. I didn't realize until I saw him that I'd been half-hoping for someone else.

"I thought you'd be asleep," he said.

"Well, I was. But, you know - minor fire incident."

Dad nodded. He looked a little grimmer than usual. He was probably feeling stressed out, the way he does when he can't be around to protect all the people he's pledged to protect at the same time. "I'm sorry about all this, Jesse. I know it takes a toll on you."

I shrugged. "I knew what I was signing up for when I said I wanted to live here. Not that I could have predicted Kid Groper's nocturnal pyromania _specifically..."_

Dad slipped into one of his scary-werewolf expressions, and I realized referring to Aiden as Kid Groper around my dad probably wasn't the best idea.

"But never mind," I said quickly. "Nothing burned down. And I know Aiden won't mess with me again. So. How did tonight go?"

Dad adopted a neutral expression. "It was fine. You should get some sleep. I just wanted to check up on you."

Oh, right. Like I was going to accept that answer. "You know, Dad, if you don't tell me what the meeting was about, I'll just ask Mercy. And if she's not forthcoming, I'll be forced to ask Warren. Or Ben."

Dad gave me a wry look and shut the door behind him. "You know I don't want you involved in pack business."

"I'm already involved," I argued. "I just got woken up in the middle of the night by pack business. I know you had some secret meeting with the fae today. I also know Aiden has powers but isn't fae. And that he and Tad and Zee are on the run from the fae, and we're protecting them-"

"The _pack_ is protecting them."

"- _and_ I know you're trying to figure out who sent the troll and why. Any leads on that?"

Dad sat down at the end of my bed, surrendering to the inevitable. "The fae want Aiden, but they aren't all cooperating with each other. Tonight, we met one of the groups that is cooperating."

"The Gray Lords?"

"Some of them."

"Which ones?"

Dad raised an eyebrow at me. "I wasn't aware you were familiar with the identities of the Gray Lords."

"I'm not," I admitted. "But if you describe them, I'll know who we're up against."

 _"The pack_ is up against some pretty powerful fae, but it's nothing we can't handle."

Yeah, right. All of this was extremely dangerous, and we both knew it. But there was no point challenging an Alpha when he said something like that, so I just said, "Was Uncle Mike there?"

Dad frowned at me.

"He was at the house this morning," I explained.

"I know," Dad said. He seemed on the verge of saying something else - probably a warning for me not to trust any fae besides Zee, or something - but in the end he just said, "Yes, Uncle Mike was there. But there was no one else you would recognize. At least, I sincerely hope not. All you need to know about the meeting is that we're safe for now. From the Gray Lords, at least."

 _Humph_ , I thought. "What about Underhill?"

Dad raised his eyebrows at me. "What about it?" he said evenly.

"Tad told me about Aiden. That he'd been trapped in Underhill for thousands of years, and Underhill gave him and some other kids powers, and now everyone's dead except Aiden, and he's on the run and all messed up from his experiences. He didn't tell me anything else. But I know there's more."

Dad nodded, with an expression that suggested he might have words with Tad later about the information he'd divulged. Unlike most other people on the planet, I was pretty sure Tad wouldn't be too intimidated by this. "Underhill wants Aiden back," Dad said. "That's why the Gray Lords are after him."

"Because they want to get back on Underhill's good side?" I guessed.

"More or less. But I'm not going to deliver Aiden back into the hands of his torturers. Either of them." Dad's jaw clenched, and I sensed the information-divulging was over.

I nodded. "Thanks for telling me."

I mean, he really hadn't told me very much, but compared to most of our previous conversations about pack business, he'd opened up a lot.

Dad didn't let it show, but I got the sense he was relieved I'd given up questioning him. He leaned over and kissed me on the head. "We'll get through this, Jesse."

"I know you will, Daddy," I said.

He smiled and we said good night. He walked away with both of us knowing that maybe it wasn't true. If Underhill _and_ the Gray Lords were both after Aiden, there was a very real chance none of us would make it through this at all.

* * *

School was weird again the next day. The werewolf fan club seemed to be growing, and since I was the only person in school who lived with a werewolf - or even knew who most of the wolves were - I got all the attention.

Lucky me.

Our lunch table was flooded with even more visitors than the day before. Apparently that freshman girl and her friends had been telling everybody that I would personally give messages to the wolves if they asked, which I guess was my fault. So we had a lot of stupid requests for me to do things like tell Darryl he was "such a BAMF" for getting thrown off a bridge and then coming back to spear the troll. Or ask if the "fire-wolf could be, like, our new school mascot."

"Omigod," Izzy said, as she shooed the fifth or sixth interloper away. "Are all the people who go to our school idiots, or just the ones who come talk to us?"

"They're acting like it's not _real,"_ I said, stabbing my fork into my salad. "It's like they think Darryl was part of an elaborate Hollywood stunt and he _meant_ to get thrown off a bridge and into a river or something. Like that wouldn't totally kill a normal person. I mean - even as a werewolf, it might've killed him. Because you know what werewolves aren't very good at? _Swimming_. If all those boats hadn't been there under the bridge... Or imagine if he'd landed on one of the boats instead of the water. He could've broken, like, all of his bones. I am not going to tell him he is a BAMF for practically _dying._ " I glared down at my salad and gave it another angry stab.

"I think the lettuce is already dead," Izzy commented.

"I just don't understand how they suddenly think it's _cool!"_ I burst out. "One day, they're all acting like I'm super sketchy because I live with violent, dangerous, freaky wolves, and the next day they see the wolves being all violent and freaky on TV and suddenly they think it's awesome? No. They all think it's a _movie_. Like the wolves are our Avengers, or whatever, and they have nothing better to do than lay down their lives for the citizens of the Tri-Cities. They are not mascots! They are _people._ They have lives, and - and jobs, and -"

"Oooookay," Izzy said, making the _calm-down_ gesture with her hands.

I finally took a deep breath, and it all came out in one furious burst.

"Right," Izzy said, when she was sure I was done ranting. "Well, I don't disagree with you. But-"

"I knew there was going to be a _but_ ," I grumbled.

"- _but_ I think you may be underestimating everyone."

"Didn't you just call them idiots?"

"Well, yes. Their requests are definitely idiotic," Izzy agreed. "But their enthusiasm isn't."

I raised my eyebrows at her.

"I just mean that I think they _do_ get that it's real," Izzy went on. "Nothing like this has ever happened before. Like, anywhere."

"That we know about," I amended.

"Right. But that's the point. This is the first public instance of werewolves defending a city anywhere in the world. Mercy literally declared the pack was here to protect people. She held up her magic walking stick and everything. I don't think people would be so excited about it if they didn't get that it was real."

"I guess," I said. I scraped the lettuce off my fork and let it fall back into the plastic salad container. "It's just...weird."

"I know," Izzy said. "I think it's partly the whole herd-mentality thing. Everyone's coming around at once. It exaggerates the weirdness."

The bell rang. We'd spent pretty much our entire lunch hour taking weird messages from people, so we hadn't gotten around to discussing anything important yet. Which was just as well, really. I didn't know much more than I had yesterday. And the only new stuff I could have told Izzy wasn't related to the mystery at hand.

I still hadn't been able to wrap my head around the whole haircutting incident yesterday. It was probably nothing. Or, if it was anything, it was probably just some weird side effect of me not having been on a date in forever, and then suddenly finding myself alone with a guy, experiencing intimate contact with his...scalp.

 _Augh._

I decided there was no point making a big deal out of the whole hand-tingling thing. We still had the whole big mess with the fae to deal with. And when that was over, assuming we made it out of this alive, Tad would be off to college again. Or he'd be off to go into hiding with his dad. Either way, there was no room in the picture for me.

I'd already gotten my heart stomped on by one guy who ditched me for college. There was no point repeating the experience.

* * *

I arrived home to find the pack in the midst of battle.

Not the kind of battle that required me to run upstairs and find Mercy's shotgun. It was the kind that sent choruses of "YARRR!" "AVAST!" and "THE TREASURE BE MINE!" rising up from the rec room. I broke into a grin and ran upstairs to grab my laptop. Then I tiptoed back and positioned myself by the basement door as I logged on.

The pack was obsessed with the Dread Pirate's Booty series. Currently, they were on a roll with Instant Spoils: The Dread Pirate's Booty Four, which the pack fondly referred to as ISTDPBF. Izzy and I liked to refer to the Dread Pirate's Booty Three and Four as "Codpieces" and "Spoils," respectively. Nobody else in the pack has adopted our lingo. But then, the pack probably doesn't find the word "Codpieces" as amusing as Izzy and I do.

I opened my saved ISTDPBF game, and my avatar, the Dread Pirate Jezebel, appeared on screen in all her swashbuckling glory. In previous versions of TDPB, I'd spent a lot of time leveling up my characters' strength and fighting EXP so I could triumph in combat. Mostly because it was extremely satisfying beating people like Darryl and Warren in a contest of fisticuffs while using the guise of a lady pirate.

But I'd had enough fighting victories to satisfy me for a while, so I'd decided to take a different tack for Spoils. Dread Pirate Jezebel was all charisma. She could talk or bribe almost any character in the game into handing over moolah or valuable treasure. She was now extremely wealthy and had obtained most of the better spoils in the game. She wasn't very good at fighting, but she had a tricked-out ship, the savviest crew doubloons could buy, and The. Best. Cannons. Ever. They pretty much never missed.

I opened up the world map to see where everybody was, and discovered that they were having a massive sea battle. I directed my ship to join the fight. I was pretty sure nobody had noticed me logging on yet. _Mua ha ha_ , I thought, as I glided into battle. At least two of the pack's ships were soon in range. One of them was Paul's, and the other I think was Ben's. It was hard to keep track, since we sank each other's ships a lot and were constantly in the process of acquiring new ones.

I opened fire with a dozen cannons and- because no one saw me coming- got twelve direct hits. _Booyah._ A chorus of groans rose up from the basement.

"Mua ha ha!" I said aloud. "The Dread Pirate Jezebel takes no survivors!"

"YARRR!" was the general response of dissent from below.

"This fight'll be yer last, ye Jezebel!" Ben called.

"Argh, verily, argh!" Paul agreed.

I set off another round of cannon fire, and a shout from Warren rang up from the basement. The game played a slo-mo video of Warren's avatar, The Dread Pirate Bill, getting run through with a brightly colored cannonball (only the fanciest cannonballs are good enough for the Dread Pirate Jezebel). The cannonball made a perfect spherical hole right through the pirate's stomach. Dread Pirate Bill succumbed to his wounds by literally folding in half and collapsing.

"DANG NABBIT," said Warren. He forgets to use his pirate voice when he loses.

"YAR!" I proclaimed from the top of the stairs.

I could have gone into the basement and joined them in person. But I wasn't really interested in being in the same room as Aiden, and I knew he was sleeping downstairs. I was happy enough sitting by the basement door and listening to everyone's reactions.

Also, there was no time to move. I was sucked into the game now, and I had a battle to win.

The cannons were definitely my best weapon, so I tried to keep my distance from the other ships and wreak as much havoc as possible from the comfort of my own deck. But the other pirates didn't put up with that for long. Paul was the first opponent to sail over and board me. Tad wasn't far behind. My crew would keep firing cannons without my direction, since were in battle mode, but I personally needed to come up with a new tactic to stay alive.

Dread Pirate Jezebel was not nearly as skillful or nimble as my previous avatars, so I never had her leave the ship during sea battles; she always died. She used to die a lot on her own ship, too, but I've been playing long enough now that Jezebel's ship, _The Angry_ _Lobster,_ is filled from stem to stern with the best booby traps pirate money can buy.

Paul and Tad both set their pirate crews after me, and I ran around setting off all the booby traps I owned.

I managed to mangle both of the crews pretty good, and then I lured Paul into a fight with some reanimated pirate skeletons. Tad was smart enough to hang back and wait until I'd set off most of the traps. Then he came right for me and cornered me. It was time to break out the big guns; I whistled for Bessie.

Bessie is my gigantic mutant pet lobster. Dread Pirate Jezebel died during four out of the five attempts to retrieve Bessie from a secret underground cavern. Now, Bessie mostly swims alongside the _Lobster_ (named in her honor, obviously), circling it in a protective fashion as we plunder the high seas. But when I whistle for her, she leaps out of the sea and lands on deck in all her mutant lobster glory.

Bessie is bright red, like she's been recently boiled, with razor-sharp teeth, extra-large claws, and an almost impenetrable exoskeleton. She's also got a purple bow on her head and a doubloon hanging on a gold chain around her neck. Because why not.

Tad's avatar, the Dread Pirate Blutig von Siegmeister (which roughly translates to "bloody master of victory"), had a peg leg and a hook and was somehow the best swordfighter in the game. I appreciated that Tad had deliberately chosen physical handicaps for his character, and then ignored all of the easy routes to turning his character into a successful pirate and made him skilled at the one thing he really shouldn't have been skilled at instead.

But Blutig von Siegmeister was no match for Bessie. He put up a very good fight, but inevitably succumbed to the crushing nature of her giant claws. Blutig's head popped off and sailed over the side of the boat. The game showed a theatrical close-up of Blutig's shocked face just before it plunged into the sea. Then it cut to Bessie doing her victory dance, which involved her waving two claws in the air like she just didn't care.

There was something wrong with the creators of this game, I decided. Decapitation really shouldn't be this amusing.

I had no time to celebrate the victory, however. Paul had defeated the pirate skeletons, and now he was coming for me.

I sent Bessie back to the water to recover from her injuries, as she was too valuable to lose completely, and Dread Pirate Blutig had managed to land some serious blows.

I was running out of booby-traps, so I put a mark on Paul and instructed my crew to go after him (the ones that were left, anyway), then retreated belowdecks to regroup. I ducked into my treasure room and hid inside a giant chest.

"Yar, there be no end to your bravery," Tad said, and I jumped a little in surprise. I hadn't heard him come up the stairs.

"It's a strategic retreat," I said.

"Mm-hmm."

"Seriously. Look at how strategic I am." Dread Pirate Jezebel peeked out through the treasure chest's keyhole. I couldn't see anything except piles of gold and other booty.

"I'll be patiently waiting fer yer demise," Tad said, crossing his arms and leaning against the door frame.

"You'll be waiting a long time, you lubber."

"Ha," Tad said.

 _Ha_ was probably right. I figured I had about a fifty-fifty chance of making it out of this alive. I had a plan, but it wasn't a very good one. I was turning myself into the last booby trap. When Paul's avatar, Dread Pirate McGee, came into the treasure room, I was going to pop out of the chest and shoot him.

The fifty-fifty part was whether my shot would get him before he got me. I had the element of surprise, but Jezebel wasn't known for her accuracy.

Too bad I couldn't sweet-talk him into sparing me. I was going to try it if I had the chance, but Jezebel's charisma became less effective on avatars she'd already killed. And I'd already brought about the demise of everyone in the pack at least once by now.

"Death by lobster," Tad muttered, as we waited. "What a way to go."

"Better than death by fish eggs," I commented.

"Is it, though?"

Paul's avatar finally made it to the treasure room. I popped out of the trunk and shot him. I think the bullet may have gotten close to his shoulder, but mostly it missed. In return, Paul volleyed a squid bomb at me. A volley of baby squids exploded out from the bomb, and Dread Pirate Jezebel was effectively removed from battle by the loving embrace of a thousand tiny tentacles, slowly squeezing her until her face turned blue.

"Yar! The Jezebel be no more!" cried Paul, and received a chorus of "YARGHH!"s in return.

"Ye be a pitiless scallawag," I muttered, and exited out of the game. I shut my laptop and stood, turning to look at Tad. In the amount of time it took to stand, my stomach managed to tie itself into a bazillion knots. I hugged my laptop to my chest, suddenly feeling the need to be protective. Not of the laptop, but...me. "How many of the pack are down there, anyway?"

"Not that many. I think maybe five," Tad said. Clearly he'd been so caught up in the game he hadn't been counting, either.

I tried to think of something to say that would make the stupid knots in my stomach go away. "It's nice to see your whole face at once."

 _Nope. Not helpful._

"You know, it's funny you mention that," Tad said. "I wasn't even thinking about getting a haircut, but then yesterday this crazy barber accosted me out of nowhere..."

I whacked him on the arm.

"...and did a fantastic job," he finished solemnly.

"You're welcome," I told him. "I'm sure your dad likes to see your whole face at the same time, too."

At this, some of the lightness left Tad's expression. He dropped his voice. "Speaking of Dad...did you hear what went on yesterday?"

"Bits and pieces," I said. "Why? Anything I should know?"

Tad glanced down at the basement. He was thinking about the wolves' supernatural hearing, I guess. I wondered what he had to tell me that the pack couldn't overhear.

"Do you want to go for a walk? It's nice out," I suggested in a normal voice. He hesitated, and this time I could tell he was thinking about leaving Aiden. I knew Tad felt protective of him, although I still was not convinced Aiden actually needed anyone to protect him.

But Zee was here - plus a bunch of pack members, right outside Aiden's door - so Tad nodded and said, "Sure."

I ran upstairs to put my laptop back on my desk, told Mercy what we were up to so nobody panicked, and then followed Tad out the back door. We walked side by side, heading for someplace we wouldn't be overheard.


	4. I've Got All This Thumping in My Chest

A/N: Hi all - just wanted to say thanks for reading! Your reviews & faves make my day. :) It felt like it took forever to get this chapter right, so I hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chapter Four

We walked across the lawn toward the woods, waving at the pack member who was currently on lookout duty. Dad wasn't going to be able to keep up this level of security much longer. Everyone had lives to get back to, and so far there hadn't been any sign of fae around the house except for Zee, Tad, and Uncle Mike.

I wasn't sure if I found the lack of enemies at our doorstep more reassuring or nerve-wracking. Whoever we were up against, I was pretty sure they were old enough and smart enough to wait until Dad relaxed his guard to make their move. And there was nothing any of us could really do about that. We just had to sit and wait.

I hated this kind of waiting. But I was familiar enough with it that I knew the best thing to do was just stay busy. Like right now, for instance. I was going on a walk with Tad. Which...was not a thing we had ever done before.

It was good that were moving and had a whole landscape to look at, because I think if we'd still been standing and facing each other I would've started feeling jittery. I had all these confusing feelings now when I looked at Tad, which had not been the goal of the whole haircut experience. I was particularly annoyed by the lingering urge to run my hands through his hair. I mean, there was just no way to pull that off as a casual gesture. Especially not while we were both standing. I'd have to deliberately reach up, probably on my tip-toes, and-

 _OMFG. Jesse. Get a grip._

Tad cleared his throat. "So how's school?"

"Um," I said, trying to get my head back in order. "You mean besides the general pain and angst of America's shared adolescent experience?"

"Besides that," he agreed.

"It's a little weird, actually. Everyone's suddenly a big fan of me now."

"Really?" Tad sounded surprised. Not in an insulting way, but in a way that pretty much mirrored how I felt.

Tad knew about all the drama that had gone down at my school after the werewolves had come out. Moreover, Tad himself had been forced to reveal he was half-fae while he was in high school. So he knew exactly how unpleasant things could be when all your classmates knew you were connected to the supernatural.

"Yeah," I said. "Apparently, all the pack needed was an action-movie style takedown, because they're total heroes now. And I'm their fan club secretary."

Tad cracked a smile at that one. "Oh, really? Do you take notes at the meetings?" he teased.

"You bet. Every day at my lunch table."

We stepped into the woods then, leaving the nicely manicured lawn behind. It was pleasantly cool and shady, and after only a few steps, I could no longer feel the eyes of the wolf on guard duty watching us. _Thanks, trees!_

Somehow, the privacy of the woods made me feel more at ease, and I ended up telling Tad about all the ridiculous things my classmates had been saying over the last few days. He was amused, especially when I got to the "can the fire-wolf be our mascot?" comment. If it was anyone but Tad, I would have been annoyed that he was laughing. But I knew he was only laughing because of how absurd it was.

"Wow," he said when I was finished. "Even with the fae and the wolves out in the open, it still feels like most people are living in a completely different reality."

"They are," I agreed. "I was trying to explain this to Izzy earlier. How even though they know, it's still not real for them. Not the way is for us."

"Yeah. No kidding," Tad muttered.

My heart gave a weird little _thump-thump_ as I realized I'd used the word _us_ and Tad had agreed. I folded my arms across my chest, as though this would somehow help me pull myself together.

"So. How are you doing?" I asked.

Tad shrugged. "Oh, you know. Hunted by my enemies. Nearly set on fire by my friends. It's an exciting life of intrigue all around."

"Kid Grop - I mean, Aiden tried to set you on _fire?"_

"Well, not on purpose. I've been sleeping outside his door."

"Oh." For some reason, the image of Tad sleeping protectively in front of Aiden's door made my heart do the weird _thump-thump_ again. And I didn't even _like_ Aiden.

 _Aughhh. GTFO, hormones!_

I was saved from further hormonal stupidity by a gigantic fallen log blocking our path. The log was long enough that it would've been a pain in the ass to walk around, and tall enough that we couldn't just step over it. Tad climbed on top of the log first and held out his hand to me.

I probably should've just taken Tad's hand like a normal person. Instead, I impulsively took a running start, put two hands on the log, and swung myself over it like I was hopping a super wide, woody fence. I stumbled a little bit on the landing and totally scratched my hands up in the process, but it was worth it to be able to turn around and look back up at Tad in triumph. "Ta-da!" I said, posing with both my hands in the air.

Tad shook his head. "Show-off," he said, jumping down.

"Hey, three whole years of gymnastics have to count for something." Never mind that that definitely hadn't been a gymnastics move.

"I didn't know you did gymnastics."

"Oh, yeah. I was a real pro from the time I was six until I was nine."

"I can imagine," Tad said, as we resumed walking.

"You cannot," I informed him. "My prowess at falling off the uneven bars was too great to be believed."

Tad laughed, which of course had been my goal. "I can't imagine why you quit."

"Well, Dad almost had a heart attack the first time he saw me fall during a competition. I decided to take it easy on him after that."

"Uh-huh," Tad said, clearly comprehending my general lack of talent at gymnastics.

"Also, that was -" I started to say, and then cut myself off, shrugging. "Well. That was a weird time."

Tad looked over at me. "How so?" he said. It wasn't like him to ask. Or at least - it wasn't like him to ask _me._

I folded my arms across my chest again. I was prepared to dismiss the whole thing, but instead I found myself saying, "It was around the time my parents were splitting up. Things got...complicated."

"Oh. That's right," he said quietly. "I guess I'd have lost interest in falling off gymnastics equipment with all that going on, too."

"Har," I said, rolling my eyes. Tad had a good idea of what had gone on with my parents' divorce. He also knew I didn't really like to talk about it, so he'd given me an easy out. Which I was glad to take.

Because seriously - we had way more important things to discuss.

"So," I said, clearing my throat. "What went down yesterday?"

"Right." Tad went silent for a minute, sorting out his thoughts. His voice was all somber again when he said, "My dad ran into the daughter of one of his old enemies. The Dragon Under the Hill is dead."

"Wait. Are we talking, like, an actual dragon?"

"No."

"Okay. But the Dragon was definitely an enemy?"

"Yeah."

"You don't exactly sound happy about that."

"I'm not." Tad pushed an overgrown branch aside and motioned for me to go past. I turned sideways to scoot between him and the tree trunk, managing not to brush against him as I went. Somehow, this only made me more aware of his proximity.

"The enmities of the old fae are complicated," he said, letting the branch swing back into place. "My dad wasn't the Dragon's enemy because they wanted to smite each other off the face of the earth. Well - most of the time."

A whole tale spilled out then: The Dragon Under the Hill vs. the Dark Smith of Drontheim - a contest of wills and magic that had gone on for centuries, creating a whole worthy-foe complex between them. This was helped along by an old-school code of honor they both seemed to follow, even as they tried to thwart one another. It sounded a bit like a Holmes and Moriarty relationship to me, with a slight flavor of Magneto and Professor X.

Zee was definitely more of a Magneto character, given his affinity for metal and all the villainy he'd perpetrated back in the day. Which meant the Dragon Under the Hill was more of a Professor X.

I could understand why Tad was upset about a Professor X character dying. And that was before Tad even got to the part about how the Dragon's demise had gone down.

"They forgot what the Dragon Under the Hill was," Tad said, a current of anger in his voice. "They trapped him and his daughter underground for decades. No food, no water, no light. Somehow Margaret - his daughter – made it out. But the Dragon didn't."

"Why would they do that?" I said. "Why would _anyone_ do that? I mean, if they wanted him dead, why wouldn't they just—you know-"

"I don't know," Tad said darkly. "I think the Dragon was too powerful to fight head-on. He started to go cruel, toward the end, the way a lot of the very old fae do. He needed to be contained. But there was no reason to do what they did. And to do that to his daughter, too-" Tad cut himself off, with a violent shake of his head. "Dad's furious. Not just because it was a terrible thing to do, but because of the dishonor of it. The Dragon deserved better than that."

"Better than fish eggs," I murmured. It came out before I could stop myself. But Tad just let out a bark of laughter without much humor in it.

"Yeah," he agreed. "I mean - _anyone_ would have deserved better than that. But the thing Dad won't say is that they would've done the same thing to him if they'd gotten the chance. They almost did get the chance."

I looked over at Tad and recognized the expression on his face. It was the same look my dad got when he couldn't protect someone. Tad wasn't just mad at the Gray Lords, I realized. He was mad at himself.

"What happened?" I asked quietly. I half expected him not to answer.

But after a moment, he burst out: "They wanted _me_ , you know? They wanted to see what I could do. But Dad convinced them I was a fragile human - that if they pushed me too far, I'd break. So they tried breaking Dad instead. And Dad made me promise not to show them anything, no matter what they did. He said he had a _plan._ So I just sat there and watched them torture him. For _weeks."_

"Tad," I said quietly, because I didn't know what else to say.

"I shouldn't have done it," he said flatly. "Dad was getting weaker every day, I could see it. But he convinced me he'd be fine. Like an idiot, I believed him. If I had known about the Dragon Under the Hill, I would've -"

He stopped walking abruptly and turned to me. His face looked young for once - frantic and full of guilt. "What if he'd _died,_ Jesse? What if the old man didn't make it because I was too stupid to put a stop to it? He didn't have a plan – he just had a vague promise from someone who could've screwed us over if he'd changed his mind. What the hell kind of idiotic son lets his dad-"

 _"Tad,"_ I said again. I was about to reach for his hand, but before I could he turned away again, veering off the path.

We were near the overlook now - a rock-studded outcropping that gave a distant view of the river. Tad walked toward the cliff edge and then sat down heavily on a boulder, letting his head fall into his hands. I followed, and sat down next to him. "You trusted your dad," I said quietly. "That's it. There's nothing idiotic about it."

Tad dragged his fingers through his hair. "What if he'd ended up like Dragon Under the Hill?"

"He didn't."

"But he could have."

"But he _didn't._ "

Tad looked up at me. One thing I've learned as an Alpha's daughter is that if you confront someone with enough conviction, you can usually get them to listen to you. So I looked Tad straight in the eye and said, "You couldn't have known about the Dragon. You couldn't have known your dad didn't have a real plan. All you did was keep a promise. It was the best you could do."

Tad shook his head, looking away from me again, so I grabbed his sleeve. "Hey," I said. "You did the best you could do."

Tad looked like he wanted to believe me, but also like he didn't think he could.

Boy, did I know that feeling. I called it the guilt monster.

After I was kidnapped (and rescued, obviously), the guilt monster reared its head on a regular basis. It kept me awake at night, replaying the whole being-abducted-by-a-stranger moment over and over again. I kept trying to figure out what I could've done differently - where I could've hidden or what I could've done so the kidnappers wouldn't have gotten to me.

But eventually I convinced myself that even if there was something I could've done, it was pointless to keep rehashing it. Because no matter how many alternate scenarios I came up with, I couldn't act on any of them. The guilt monster was just making me fixate on phantom lives - alternate realities that didn't and couldn't exist. Unless somebody invented time travel or something.

Tad was beating himself up over nothing. And I couldn't just sit there and let him.

I let go of his sleeve and put my hand on his back. "Listen," I said quietly. "What you did was a lot harder than giving in. I don't think I could've watched someone I love being tortured for that long. Not if I knew there was something I could do about it. Not even if I'd made a promise to my dad." I reached up to tug on one of his shortened locks of hair. "I think maybe you're the one who should have the Gryffindor spirit hair."

That got to him, finally; he let out a short burst of laughter. "Maybe you're right," he said, looking out over the landscape.

"Of course I am." I dropped my head onto his shoulder and put my arm around him, giving him a friendly squeeze. Tad rested his head on mine in kind, letting out a deep breath. I hoped that meant he was letting out all the guilt, too. I rubbed my hand up and down his back gently a couple of times. Then it was time for me to sit up and pull away.

Only I didn't.

We just sat like that for a minute, me with my hand on his back and Tad with his head resting on mine. I gazed out over the cliff's edge, watching the silvery glint of the river as it wound through the lush green landscape. I kept waiting for Tad to move - to lift his head and draw away, re-establishing the normal bounds of friendship.

But he didn't.

Instead, he leaned into me. I could feel the tension draining out of him as I traced my hand up and down his back. After a minute, his arm went around my waist and I turned into him, my cheek pressing against his chest. My awareness of the woods and the winding river fell away, and then it was just me and Tad: his arm tight around me, my head tucked underneath his chin, his hand burying itself in my hair.

"Jesse..." he said, and there was something raw in his voice that made tingles erupt all over my skin.

He pulled away, but he didn't let go. He still had his hand against the side of my face, his thumb gently stroking my cheek. _It's just Tad,_ I tried to tell myself, but my body wasn't listening. I felt like I was vibrating from head to toe. Like if he didn't kiss me soon, I might combust.

Only he didn't kiss me. He just looked at me like he was trying to memorize me. And then I realized - maybe he was. "You're going after them, aren't you?" I said quietly. It wasn't really a question.

"Yes."

"When?"

Something shuttered closed in Tad's eyes, and now he did pull away. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to dump all this on you. I shouldn't have..."

"Don't," I said. "Don't you dare."

Tad drew his hands away from me, and shook his head like he was trying to clear it.

It was funny how quickly all my fluttery feelings turned to anger. "You don't need to protect me, Tad. I'm not a kid."

Tad rubbed his hands over his face, letting out a quiet groan. "Believe me, Jesse. I do _not_ think of you as a kid."

"Good," I said, ignoring my stupid heart going all _thwomp-thwomp-thwomp_. "Then you can tell me the truth. I don't need to know where you're going, or what you're going to do. I just want you to tell me when. Can you at least do that? Come say good-bye before you leave? It's bad enough with my dad and Mercy running off at all hours, but if you and Zee are going too-"

"All right," he said quietly. "I promise."

"Good," I said again. And then, because I couldn't take it anymore, I stood up and marched back through the woods.

Tad followed. But he didn't reach for me, or try to stop me from going on ahead - which was as good a sign as any that whatever was going on between us wasn't something he was willing to pursue.

This time when I reached the fallen log, I didn't do anything stupid or show-offy. I climbed up without so much as a glance at Tad, and jumped down without any help at all, thank you very much. But my frustration got the better of me, because I let out an angry growl as I landed. It's funny how living with wolves turns all your angry noises into growls.

"Jesse," Tad said, as he jumped down from the log. He had to jog to catch up to me, and grabbed my arm.

"I'm fine," I lied, pulling my arm away.

"Jesse-"

"This is not about _you,_ all right?" I said, wheeling on him. "Everyone has something to do except for me. Everyone has someone to go off and fight. And I just have to sit around waiting, hoping somebody will actually tell me what's going on. And then even if I do know what's going on, there never seems to be anything I can actually do that makes any difference -"

"That's not true," Tad said.

"Yeah, right."

"I mean it. Jesse, you have no idea what it's meant to me the last few days, just being able to hang out with you. My dad's hurt, Aiden's a mess, your dad and Mercy have a whole host of fae breathing down their necks because of us, but you... All this is going on, and you still got up and cooked breakfast for everyone. You gave me a _haircut._ You-"

"Are only capable of accomplishing stupid domestic tasks while everyone else does things that matter?"

 _"No,"_ Tad said, grabbing me by the shoulders. "Jesse, listen to me. The fact that you are capable of functioning normally while all of this is going on around you...it's like you're the anchor. You're the only steady thing in the middle of all the chaos. And it's not just me - I think it's true for your dad and Mercy, too. None of us want any of this shit to happen. I don't want to have to go off and seek vengeance with my dad. Your dad doesn't want a fight with the fae. What we really want is just..."

"Waffles?" I suggested.

Tad laughed helplessly, and his hands moved up to take hold of my face. "See, that's what I mean. You...you're just..."

"Me," I said quietly. I thought I finally understood what he'd been getting at yesterday. But I couldn't look at him with my cheeks burning like that, so I started at the ground instead.

Tad moved closer to me. "Jesse..." he said quietly, and his forehead gently came to rest against mine.

Something really interesting might have happened then, but there was a sudden loud hammering sound, and we both jumped, jerking apart.

It took us about two seconds to realize it was just a woodpecker. But the spell was broken. I turned and started off along the path again. Tad fell into step beside me, and neither of us said anything until we were almost out of the woods.

"It's meant a lot to me to see you, too," I said quietly, and then I hurried out of the trees and across the lawn, where Tad knew better than to say anything because one of the wolves would certainly overhear.

* * *

"What. What. _What,"_ Izzy said. _"How_ did it take you this long to tell me? How did you not immediately call me? Also: What did I tell you? I totally told you! He's totally into you. He totally needed someone to confide in. And-"

"You're totally annoying when you gloat. You know that, right?"

"Blah, blah," Izzy said, unaffected. "You - - uh-uh. Nope. Not today. Sorry!" Izzy held up a hand to ward off a random Junior who'd approached our table. "We only take messages for the pack on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Come back tomorrow."

I raised an eyebrow as the bewildered Junior wandered off. "Since when do we have a system for werewolf messages?"

"Since we're in the middle of an extremely important discussion and I am tired of being interrupted."

"I would hardly call this an extremely important-"

"I still can't believe you gave him a haircut," Izzy said, looking at me with a mixture of admiration and disbelief.

"I can't, either," I admitted, biting off the end of a French fry.

I hadn't really meant to tell Izzy any of this. Not yet. But I'd been so distracted in class all morning, replaying yesterday over and over in my head, and of course Izzy picked up on it. Then once I started talking, I couldn't stop.

I didn't tell her everything. Some of it was just between me and Tad. But I told her the gist of it: the haircut, the flirting, the walk in the woods, the interrupted-by-a-woodpecker moment. It felt good to get it all out.

We hashed and re-hashed until I was sure I wasn't imagining things or reading too much into it. Then Izzy said, "Question. Does Tad wear a glamour?"

"I don't know. No? Why would he need a glamour?"

"All the rest of the fae wear glamours, don't they?"

"Well...yeah. But Tad's not exactly fae. He's still half-human."

"True," Izzy agreed. "But I was just thinking: if the half that isn't human can create giant metal spears out of practically nothing, does that mean he has other fae powers, too?"

"I don't know. I guess it's never come up," I said.

"Hmm," Izzy said. "Well, let's suppose Tad does have a glamour. What does that mean in terms of him actually needing a haircut?"

I opened my mouth to respond, and then closed it again. This had not occurred to me before. "I don't know," I said finally. "I guess he wouldn't, if his appearance is an illusion. But I'm not sure that's all glamours are. I mean...Zee wears a glamour, for sure. And as far as I can tell, it's less of an illusion and more of a shape-shifting kind of thing. It might not be his original appearance, but that doesn't mean it's not how he really is now."

"Okay, so...a little bit less like a hologram and a little bit more like Tonks and her Metamorphmagus-ing?" Izzy said, referencing one of our mutual favorite Harry Potter characters, who could change her appearance at will.

"Something like that," I agreed.

Izzy popped a tater tot into her mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. "Well, either way - you are the only person in the world who could make something as mundane as a haircut seem sexy."

I rolled my eyes.

* * *

For once, nothing major went on at the house that afternoon. Security was much lighter when Ben dropped me off after school, which was no surprise. Since there weren't many pack members hanging around and Zee was gone, Tad spent pretty much the whole evening hanging out in the basement with Aiden. As I helped throw dinner together, I overheard Tad walking Aiden through the various uses of a smart phone, and couldn't help feeling a certain vindictive pleasure at Aiden's obvious frustration over it.

Kid Groper wisely elected to stay in the basement during dinner, which meant Tad stayed with him. So me, my dad, and Mercy got to sit down for a family meal together for the first time in days. It was kind of nice, just having the three of us together, although admittedly I was a little distracted by my desire to keep eavesdropping on Tad. But I managed to keep a good conversation up, anyway. Distraction via rambling is one of my special talents.

Izzy texted me while I was doing my homework, wanting to know how Tad was and whether I'd managed to engage in any more scandalous grooming sessions today.

 _Nope,_ I told her. _KG taking all his attention._

 _Rude,_ Izzy wrote back.

 _Don't worry. There's always time for sexy toenail clipping later._

Izzy sent back a grossed-out emoji.

Me: _Or maybe I could trim his nose hairs._

Izzy: _OMG stop being a weirdo and just jump him already_

Me: _Too noisy. The wolves would overhear_

Izzy: _Tad's magic. Make him soundproof ur room_

Me: _idk if it works like that_

Izzy: _sure it does. MAGIC!_

Me: _I have to study now_

Izzy: _Anatomy?_

Me: _Govt_

Izzy: _Maybe Tad can help. you can show him all your checks and balances_

Me: _he's not ready for all the gold i've got in my treasury_

Izzy: _LOLOL_

I was really glad I lived in the age of texting. I could only imagine the look on my dad's face if he'd overheard me and Izzy having that kind of conversation.

I turned my phone on silent and stuck it in a drawer so it wouldn't distract me. My government homework unfortunately involved some questions on checks and balances, which did not help me focus. But by the time I made my way through all my other work, it was pretty much time for bed, and I'd pretty much stopped thinking about how I hadn't seen or spoken to Tad all day.

It seemed silly not to at least say hi to him. I mean - he was right there in the basement. Along with Kid Groper.

I didn't want to let Aiden's presence dictate my actions when it came to Tad. But Aiden wasn't the only obstacle. I didn't want to just say _hi_ to Tad. I wanted to figure out exactly what was going on between us. And I didn't think I could do that with both Mercy and my dad around.

It was too late at night for us to go for a walk in the woods - and if Tad was tutoring Aiden in the ways of smartphones, there was no point trying to send him a private message via text.

 _Blah._

Oh, well. Might as well just go to bed. There was always tomorrow, right?

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke and the sound of alarms going off. Again.

My dad had just finished getting the smoke alarms rewired, so they made a dull buzzing noise now instead of a shrieking beep. At first, I thought the buzzing was what had woken me up. Then I realized someone was touching my shoulder, gently shaking me awake.

"Jesse."

It was Tad. I knew it by his voice but also by the way my skin felt when he touched me - like I suddenly had more nerve endings there than in any other part of my body.

"Hey. Jesse," he whispered.

"Mmph?" I said. I'd definitely meant to say something more elegant.

"Wake up."

"I'm 'wake," I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. "What's up?"

"I have to go," he said quietly.

That got my attention. "What - now?" I pushed myself up, and Tad sat back on his heels.

"Yeah. I thought now would be the best time to...you know, while everyone's distracted with Aiden."

"Right," I said. For no apparent reason, I suddenly became aware of the possibility of morning breath.

Tad cleared his throat. "Dad's going to stick around a few more days. But I'm not sure when I'll be back. So I...well. Here. I made you this thing."

I held out my hand, and he dropped something small and unexpectedly heavy into it. It was metal - cool and smooth. I held it up against the moonlight and saw that it was a little statuette of a lobster. With a miniature bow on its head. I clamped my hand over my mouth to hold in my laughter.

"Do you like it?" Tad said, though clearly he could see that I was trying not to lose it. There was enough moonlight in the room for me to catch the impish grin on his face.

"Wow," I said, once I managed to pull myself together. "You know, I've never seen anyone render a statue of their foe so lovingly."

"Dread Pirate Blutig is a complicated man."

I looked down at the little statue, and something warm pooled in my stomach - just before it began to tie itself in knots. "I love it," I said quietly.

"Good."

I curled my hand around the statue and looked up at him again. "Please be careful."

Tad nodded, swallowing visibly. "I'll be back, Jesse. If for no other reason than to face off against Dread Lobster Bessie."

My shoulders shook in another silent laugh, but a part of me suddenly wanted to cry. Everyone was always going off to fight. And the only thing I could ever do was worry about them.

Some of this must have shown on my face, because suddenly Tad rose onto his knees, took my face in his hands, and planted a hard kiss on my forehead. "I'll come back to you, Jesse," he said, and I nodded dumbly, feeling suddenly warm and shaky in all my limbs. My brain was still trying to work out what had just happened when Tad kissed me on the forehead again, got up, and left.

I just sat there for a minute after he'd gone, clutching Dread Lobster Bessie in my hand and playing it over in my head again, wondering what I would have done if I hadn't been afraid of morning breath.


	5. Let's Do The Fae Wars Again

Chapter Five

Attraction's a funny thing.

It's like...one day I was going along and everything was fine, and the next day I woke up and realized I couldn't even look at a pair of scissors without thinking about a Certain Person. Which was a problem, because thinking about a Certain Person kind of made me feel like I was riding the spinning teacups at Disneyland even when I was standing completely still. And that was ridiculous, because come on - why should someone who was not even present be allowed to have that much of an effect on my innards?

I wasn't in denial or anything. But I was a little bewildered by how quickly all of this had come on. I mean - I'd known Tad for nine years. And now I suddenly didn't want to go anywhere without a mutant lobster figurine in my pocket.

"He made you _this?"_ Izzy said, when I showed it to her at lunch.

"Mm-hmm," I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

"Whoa." Izzy turned Dread Lobster Bessie over in her hands, marveling at the detail. "What is Tad studying at school again?"

"Um...science? Econ? Something useful."

"Well, it should be art. Or alchemy, or...something."

"I'm pretty sure Tad can't turn things into gold."

"You know what I mean. If I could make something like _this_ just by wiggling my fingers at a piece of metal, I wouldn't waste my time doing Calculus."

"I'm pretty sure the whole point of college is so Tad can get something he can't conjure up with magic."

"Blah," Izzy said. "All he gets out of that is a fancy piece of paper. I say it's a waste if he doesn't share _this_ with the world."

She handed back Dread Lobster Bessie. I tucked the figurine inside my hoodie pocket, zipping it up tight. I had already decided I wasn't going to tell Tad I was carrying it around with me everywhere. I'd feel way too silly admitting that having Bessie close made me feel connected to him somehow - and also inexplicably convinced that he would be okay.

"One thing at a time," I said. "First we have to survive whatever it is we're up against."

"Those dastardly villains better get a move on," Izzy said. "The suspense is killing me."

"No kidding," I muttered.

I'd finally managed to fill Izzy in on my dad and Mercy's clandestine meeting with the fae, as well as everything Tad had shared about the Dragon Under the Hill. Based on available facts, we'd determined that there were definitely multiple factions within the fae working against one another. For instance, at least one of the Gray Lords had helped torture Zee - but another Gray Lord had helped him and Tad escape. So even the people who were supposedly in charge weren't on the same page here. Which made it difficult to determine who we should be on the lookout for.

Especially considering I didn't know who most of the fae were or what they looked like.

"Okay. So what are the odds that the fae who sent your mom a threatening note are the same fae Tad is chasing after?" Izzy said.

"Reasonably high," I decided. "If they're not exactly the same people, then they're at least allies."

"What are the odds Tad will find them and vanquish them before they go after your dad again?"

"Um, I don't think Tad's going to _vanquish_ anybody. I mean - they're not demons."

"What do demons have to do with anything?"

"Don't you vanquish demons?"

"I think you mostly exorcise them," Izzy said.

"Well that, too. But _vanquish_ isn't like a normal verb. It sounds extreme. Like you're making them vanish off the face of the earth or something."

"Well, Tad's an extreme man. Didn't you see him on that bridge? Those big long javelins?" Izzy said, wiggling her eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes, trying not to think about his - um - javelin. Izzy whipped out her phone. "According to Google, _v_ _anquish_ means to _defeat thoroughly_. Conquer, defeat, trounce, rout -"

"Okay," I said. "So maybe Tad is out to vanquish his enemies."

"I'll be sure to tell him how confident you are in his abilities."

"I didn't say -" I began, but I didn't get a chance to finish, because just then the random Junior guy from yesterday appeared at the end of our table.

"Uh - hey, Jesse," he said.

"Hi," I said back.

"Not now!" Izzy said, holding up her hand to ward him off.

"It's Thursday," he pointed out. "You said I could come back on Thursday."

 _"Augh,"_ Izzy said, looking pained. "Fine. But make it quick."

The guy shifted his attention to me and cleared his throat, looking nervous. "I'm Carter. I, uh, don't actually have a message for the werewolves."

Izzy threw up her hands, and I gave her a Look. Izzy made a face, but she stayed quiet.

"What can I do for you, Carter?" I said, feeling weirdly like my own secretary. Since apparently I wasn't currently acting as my dad's secretary.

"I was wondering if you wanna goo - I mean, if you'd want to _go -_ uh - if you'd wanna-go-out-sometime," Carter said. He shoved his hands into his pockets, looking even more nervous.

I blinked. This was so far from what I'd been expecting that I was struggling to come up with a response other than, "Oh."

I didn't remember ever talking to Carter before. I mean - I was really only sure he was a Junior because he had a yellow lanyard around his neck. We all wore different colors based on our grades; Izzy and I both had green lanyards somewhere, if we ever bothered to wear them.

So I was approximately 30% confused, 10% flattered, and 60% annoyed that Carter was asking me out, given that we'd never even had a real conversation.

"Um...thanks," I said. I'd never really been in a position to turn someone down before, so I wasn't exactly sure how to go about this. I didn't want to be rude to Carter, since I thought it was pretty gutsy of him to come by our table and ask me out when he didn't even know me. But I wasn't going to say yes, either, because...come on, who asks somebody out they've never spoken to before?

So I said, "That's, um, really nice of you, Carter. But...uh...there is just a lot going on with the pack right now. It's a really busy time for me, and I'm not sure I really have time to-"

"She's seeing someone," Izzy interjected. I gave Izzy an outraged look, which she completely ignored.

"Oh!" Carter said. "Wow. I mean - not wow like I'm surprised, just wow that - um - it's not someone at school, is it? Because I feel like if it was someone at school, I would've heard, and then I wouldn't have come over and asked you..."

"No," I said. "It's not someone at school. Actually, it's not any-"

"It's kind of a secret," Izzy said, dropping her voice to a whisper. "He's in college."

Carter did not do a great job of disguising his surprise. "Oh! That's, uh, cool. Is it, um..." Carter trailed off. His ears turned bright red, which I didn't understand until he blurted out, "Is it one of the wolves?"

"No," I said, trying and failing to prevent my own cheeks from turning red. "I am not dating a werewolf."

"Oh. Okay. Well, that was all I wanted to...I'll just go now," Carter said. He gave an awkward little wave and walked away.

"Bye," I said. My cheeks felt like they were on fire. Izzy looked like she was barely containing laughter. I threw a tater tot at her. "Izzy, what is the matter with you? That was _not funny_! And also - not true!"

"I'm sorry! I just - oh come on, that was a little funny."

"No, it wasn't! And you shouldn't have said that. I am not dating...you-know-who."

"Voldemort?"

I threw another tater tot at her. "You know what I mean."

"Fine," Izzy said, sobering up a little. "But are you trying to tell me that clandestine midnight gift-giving sessions fall within the bounds of normal friendship? Because if so, I call shenanigans."

"That is beside the point."

"That is exactly the point. Ever since the bridge incident, you've had - you know - admirers. But Tad is the only one of your admirers who isn't full of it. I mean - where have all these other guys been for the last three years? And after the way this school has treated you, I don't think you shouldn't be letting anybody down easy. You should be telling them, _I am hot and you missed out, bitches!_ "

I glanced around, even though I was pretty sure nobody was listening to us. "Okay, first of all, I don't know what's going on with Tad. Second, even if anything actually _was_ going on, I wouldn't be spreading it around school. Because what if it gets back to the pack that I am 'sort of seeing someone'? My dad will find out, and then Mercy will find out, and then they'll ask me point-blank what's going on, and I won't be able to lie to them because they're both super-human lie detectors - and what am I supposed to tell them, exactly? That Tad gave me a _lobster?_ "

Izzy had the decency to look a bit guilty.

"On top of that," I went on, "Tad is kind of, you know, _living in my house_. So what am I supposed to say if it gets back to him that I've been telling everyone at school I'm dating a guy in college?"

Izzy's own cheeks went a bit red, which gave me a certain vindictive satisfaction. Izzy might not have much of a temper, but I do. "I'm sorrrrryyyy," she said. "I didn't think that far ahead. Although...if it makes you feel any better, I don't think this will start a major rumor. It's not like Carter's going to spread it around school that you turned him down. Seems unlikely this would get back to your bodyguards."

I raised an eyebrow and quoted _Hamilton_ at her. "'Alexander, rumors only grow.'"

Izzy grimaced, and then the bell rang.

"Okay, I do have one small query for you," Izzy said, as we gathered up our stuff.

"'What comes next?'" I said, quoting again.

"Well - that, too. But I was thinking more about the fae. Why are they so obsessed with Tad's magic? Or Aiden's, for that matter?"

I was about to say that I had no idea when it occurred to me that Tad and Aiden had something in common. "Tad's part human," I said slowly, as I dumped my lunch tray. "And Aiden started out as human. But they both have really powerful magic. Which makes them different from any of the rest of the fae."

"What about all the other part-humans? Don't they have magic?" Izzy said.

I shook my head. "Not like Tad. Most of the half-fae don't inherit much magic, and the ones that do usually end up...well, let's just say _cray-cray_ would be a polite term for how they turn out."

"Yikes," Izzy said, as we joined the crush of students exiting the cafeteria. I waited until we were out of the bottleneck before I went on.

"And Kid Groper...okay. The fae came into our world in the first place because Underhill kicked them out, right?" I said.

"Right," Izzy said, even though she only knew this because I'd told her so.

"Except Underhill didn't kick Aiden out. It kept him for a couple thousand years and gave him fire powers instead."

"So...you think the fae are jealous of him?" Izzy said.

"Maybe. The fae seem pretty jealous in general. I mean - we know that Tad's the only half-fae with any kind of decent magic, and KG's the only human to survive Underhill, and the fae want _both_ of them. I think...I think maybe the fae want to know what makes Tad and Kid Groper so special. And they're willing to do a lot to find out."

We reached our lockers. Izzy's was broken; all she had to do was kick the bottom corner twice and it popped open. "So this is kind of a weird question," she said. "But what do _you_ think makes Kid Groper so special?"

I made a face. I still got a grossed-out sort of feeling when I thought of Kid Groper. But it probably wasn't productive to say that the only 'special' thing I'd noticed about him was his willingness to sexually harass people.

So I spun the lock and pulled my locker open before saying, "I honestly have no idea. Underhill gave Aiden powers and let him live there even when all the true fae had been kicked out. I guess that alone would be enough to make the fae jealous. But as for what Underhill saw in him that made it - or her, or whatever - want to keep Aiden alive...beats me."

Izzy finished gathering up her books and slammed her locker shut. If she didn't slam it extra-hard, it bounced right back open again. "Well...just keep me posted and let me know if you think of anything. Also, if any rumors make it back to your dad, I'll call and say I made the whole thing up."

"You _did_ make the whole thing up."

Izzy just raised a skeptical eyebrow at me and headed off to Physics.

* * *

The evening that followed was, to put it mildly, not my favorite evening ever.

The house was emptier than usual. My dad and Mercy were both off dealing with business (pack or otherwise), Zee was MIA, Tad was off on a secret mission, and Joel and his wife were having a quiet evening to themselves. Which left me alone with Ben and Paul, our resident guard-wolves for the evening, and the one and only Kid Groper.

Stupendous.

My first thought was to lock myself in my room on the pretense of homework. Except that I'd stupidly told Paul on the ride home from school that I didn't really have homework to speak of. Which is how I ended up at the world's most awkward dinner table, involving spaghetti, meatballs, supernatural creatures, and...me.

Ben did most of the talking. Partly this was because he's good at talking (especially if it involves swear words), but mostly it was because the rest of us didn't have much to say to each other. I, for one, was doing my best to ignore Aiden's presence. Paul (for completely different but equally valid reasons) didn't like Aiden, either, so he was avoiding direct conversation with Aiden also.

Which might have worked out okay, except that Aiden did not appreciate being ignored. I wasn't sure if it was because he wasn't used to being ignored, or the opposite. Based on what I knew of his backstory, I suspected it was the latter. This might have stirred up sympathy in me if I didn't still get pissed off every time I looked at him and his little gropey hands.

As it was, Ben was left with an agitated werewolf, an irritated pyromaniac, and a moody teenager all through dinner, which he attempted to deal with by telling a series of increasingly gory but somehow quite humorous Jack the Ripper stories. This was maybe a poor choice of subject matter, but it was good enough to distract Aiden, who had no idea who Jack the Ripper was and also no idea what London had looked like in the late 1800's.

I mostly listened to Ben's tales, but my thoughts kept wandering to other things. Such as wishing Aiden wasn't so afraid of being alone so he could've stayed in the basement all evening. Or that Joel hadn't decided to have alone time with his wife so _he_ could've kept Aiden company. As Ben tried to explain the concept of a mechanical umbrella and how it might be used to fend off a murderous assailant, I couldn't help wondering about Izzy's question.

What _did_ make Kid Groper so special to Underhill? He hadn't just survived Underhill; Underhill wanted him _back._ But what for? It occurred to me that maybe Underhill was lonely, but that seemed like a strange reason to want Aiden back. Setting my personal feelings about him aside - why pursue Kid Groper specifically, when he clearly didn't want to go back? Why not just let all the rest of the fae back in, since they clearly _did_ want to go back?

The most obvious reason was that Underhill was sick of their BS. I didn't know a ton about the fae, but what I did know led me to believe that none of them valued Underhill as an entity. The fae were more powerful in Underhill, so they wanted to go back. I guess there was also a factor of considering Underhill their rightful home. But if Underhill was a thinking entity, then that was pretty arrogant. Underhill was more like an ex-lover they needed to woo back.

So they were trying to woo her back by capturing and returning Aiden.

The big picture was becoming clearer to me, but I was frustratingly still no closer to understanding the _why_ behind the importance of Kid Groper. And it wasn't just Underhill - Tad, Zee, my dad, and Mercy all thought he was worth protecting, too. And not just because the pack had to save face after what Mercy declared on the bridge. My dad had seen something in Aiden that made him want to protect him like Aiden was one of our own.

I was done with my spaghetti, so I leaned back in my chair and casually stuck my hands in my pocket, curling my fingers around Dread Lobster Bessie. Maybe I'd ask Tad to explain more to me when he got back. I hadn't been super receptive to his initial description of Kid Groper's backstory, but there had to be something else there I was missing.

Either that, or Underhill was cuckoo bananas and Aiden had some sort of mind-mesmerizing magic he'd cast on everyone, but which only worked if he hadn't previously groped you.

 _Ha_.

"Right," Ben said, pushing away his bowl. "I think this has been sufficiently awkward. Shall we go out star-gazing then?"

"Star-gazing?" Aiden and I echoed in unison. I glared at him, but he returned my glare with an expression that looked obnoxiously like satisfaction.

"Yeah. Star-gazing," Ben repeated, like we were morons. "It's an exceptionally clear night, and I think we'd all get on a lot better if we'd pull our heads out of our asses and focus on something a bit greater than ourselves."

Paul and I exchanged a glance. Sometimes, leaving Ben in charge of of soothing hot tempers was akin to throwing gasoline on a grease fire.

"All right," I said. "Let me just remove my head from my sphincter while I put on bug spray then."

Paul snorted in laughter. Aiden looked slightly alarmed, and as I went off to the hall closet for some insect repellent, I heard him ask, "What does she mean, spraying bugs?"

Ben was right. It was a very clear night. Nice and cool, too, so I felt very cozy in my hoodie and didn't look weird sticking my hands in my pockets and clutching Dread Lobster Bessie as we stretched out on the star-gazing rock.

The rock is at the far end of the back yard, not far from the river. It's so big you could probably fit seven or eight people across, and it's far enough from the edge of the woods that it provides and unobstructed view of the sky.

It's hard to stay mad when you're looking at the stars. I didn't even realize how much anger I'd been harboring until I was stretched out, staring at the depths of the universe, and felt it draining out of me. The sky was so vast it always made me feel small, but not in a bad way. It was more like the stars reminded me how small and fleeting my problems were when held up against infinity.

The stars got clearer and sharper and the house lights seemed dimmer the longer I looked, until it seemed as though the lights of the house weren't there anymore at all.

The night got quiet. Ben sat up. I knew better than to ask _What?_ when a wolf was listening for something, so I sat up, too, and looked around. I realized that I hadn't just been imagining the lights of the house getting dimmer. The power had gone out.

And now Ben and Paul were both staring at the river.

You know how sometimes you're in a room and you think you see something move, so you glance over and realize it's just a shadow? And then a minute later you get the same sensation, and even though you know now it's just a shadow you have to look over again anyway? Only this time it's not a shadow. It's a GIANT SPIDER.

That's what happened by the river. I squinted into the dark and saw only the trees along the bank and what looked like an oddly shaped piece of driftwood in the current.

The next time I looked, there were four inhuman creatures rising up out of the water.

* * *

The worst part wasn't before, or during. It was after.

Mercy came in with the cavalry (aka Zee, followed by my dad), and as soon as the fae were vanquished, they looked at us and asked us to explain what happened.

Here's what I remember:

The dripping-wet fae, moving through the dark.

Ben, shouting at us to run and hide in the safe room.

The shock of the ground beneath my feet as I ran barefoot back to the house.

Aiden, locking the door behind us. Me, shouting at him not to be stupid, then running up the stairs instead of going to the basement.

Mercy's gun in my hands. The flood of relief when I got the ammunition loaded. The violent kickback in my hands as the sitting room window shattered and the bullets flew out into the night.

We were lucky it was so clear out. Lucky that Ben had suggested stargazing. Otherwise we never would have seen them coming. And without the full light of the stars and the moon, I never would have been able to see well enough to shoot at the creatures Ben and Paul were fighting.

I didn't shoot without thinking. I shot thinking, _Don't hit Ben. Don't hit Paul. Don't let them in,_ over and over again in my head.

 _Don't hit Ben. Don't hit Paul. Don't let them in. DON'T HIT PAUL. DON'T HIT PAUL. DON'T HIT PAUL._

I didn't hit Paul. I hit the fae-girl who had been magically flinging boulders all over the yard.

I don't know why my mom decided to decorate the yard with giant rocks, but it was really backfiring on us now. The house shook as one of the boulders hit the house. Paul let out a sound that was part-yell, part-howl as another boulder slammed into his shoulder.

I shot, and Boulder Bitch went down.

Then there was another fae, climbing up the side of the house toward my window.

 _Don't let them in. DON'T LET THEM IN._

There were no good angles. But when the fae-dude's head appeared in the window, I shot him point-blank. He just snarled at me.

"Jesse, MOVE!"

I didn't move. Aiden made me. The window shattered completely as the fae dude burst into the room. I reeled back as Aiden put his hand out, and the fae-dude burst into blue flames. We didn't wait to see whether he perished. We ran out of the room and barricaded his smoldering ass in.

Then there was just chaos.

I could tell more of the pack had arrived, but I couldn't tell where they all were. I crouched down in the hallway, motioning for Aiden to follow my lead. Now that Ben and Paul had backup, the best thing for us to do was probably head to the safe room. Except that I had a gun, and Aiden had blue fire, and the last time somebody attacked our house, I got kidnapped. And there was NO FREAKING WAY I was letting these assholes get what they wanted.

I reloaded the gun.

The next thing I remembered was a giant blue insect-looking fae in our living room.

And then me, standing on the stairs and screaming at it that it couldn't have what it wanted.

And then Mercy, rushing in to impale Blue Bug Lady with her walking stick. Followed by Joel, in tibicena form, rushing in to finish the bug lady off.

I felt like I had seen this scene before. Only this wasn't on a bridge.

Then my dad was there, wrapping his arms around Mercy, and I was standing on the stairs, still staring down at Blue Bug Lady when they turned to us and asked what had happened.

As the need for adrenaline faded, my arms started to shake. I clutched the gun so it wouldn't show so much, and as I spoke I remembered that I'd killed someone.

Ben was proud of me, they said. I'd shot her right between the eyes.

I went out into the yard later to see for myself, and for once no one tried to stop me.

Despite my dad's best efforts to protect me, I'd seen dead bodies before. I even recognized the horrible smell.

But I'd never seen one that was my fault.

I turned and walked back into the house, slamming the door behind me. A windowpane shattered, and glass went skittering all over the floor.

* * *

My bedroom looked exactly the same as it had that morning. None of the windowpanes weren't broken. No angry fae had busted the walls in. But it still felt wrong.

It felt wrong in the same way it had felt wrong the first time I walked back into my bedroom after being kidnapped three years ago. The room was the same, but I was different.

I stared at my phone and thought about texting Izzy. After a dozen failed attempts, I turned my flashlight on, grabbed the baseball bat I kept hidden behind my bed, and went out to the shed, where I found a can of the largest nails we had. Along with the most intimidating-looking hammer.

It took me three tries to get the bat situated just right in the clamp, and another few tries to figure out how I was supposed to drive nails into the bat without breaking all of the fingers on my left hand. It was slow work. One of the wolves could have done it in minutes. But I didn't care. It felt good to pound and pound and pound. Like I was working the rest of the adrenaline out of my muscles (even though I knew it didn't really work that way).

My dad would never let me keep a gun in my room, but after tonight I needed something besides an ordinary baseball bat close at hand while I slept. This would do.

Aiden came and found me when I was halfway finished. I glanced at him and went right back to work. Aiden of all people would understand why I was doing what I was doing.

He just stood there and watched while I worked, and for once it didn't creep me out to have him there. He waited until I was done before saying, "Salt neutralizes magic. You should add a layer of salt to it, too."

"Thanks, pipsqueak," I said, and meant it.

He'd saved my life when that creepy wall-climber had burst into the house.

I couldn't hate him anymore.

* * *

I hid the salt-covered nail bat behind my bed before I let my dad into my room to say good night. I wasn't sure if he'd freak out or approve if he saw it. Mercy would probably understand, but I was pretty sure my dad would still freak out. I was supposed to have the pack to protect me, after all, not dangerously modified sports equipment.

I wondered if that would change after tonight. I was, after all, Jesse Hauptman: fae killer.

I shuddered involuntarily, and decided that if I couldn't joke about it yet in my own head, I probably wasn't prepared to have a discussion about homemade weapons with my dad. So I did my best to act like everything was okay when he came to tuck me in.

Although it's pretty hard to act like everything is normal when you're eighteen years old and your dad is coming to tuck you into bed.

"How are you doing?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of my mattress.

"Oh, you know. I'm basically a sniper assassin now. So that's cool." I tried to pass it off as a genuine joke, but my voice broke on the last couple words, and then there were tears streaming down my cheeks. My dad pulled me into a hug, and I cried into his shoulder.

I would never admit this to him, but I think the most magical thing about my dad is his ability to make anybody feel better. And I mean _anybody_. There aren't many Alphas like my dad. In fact, there's only one Alpha more powerful in the entire world. And he could even make his enemies feel like everything was going to be all right in the middle of a tsunami, if they'd let him.

As for me, his only daughter - it took about five seconds before my dad's magic took effect. I went from feeling amped up and terrified to completely drowsy and safe. After a few more tears, I was ready to crash.

My dad sat next to me, rubbing his hand in slow circles on my back until I feel asleep.

* * *

When I woke up, the lights were back on. At first, I thought the sudden glare of my bedside lamp was the reason I'd woken up in the middle of the night, but then I heard my door creak open.

I grabbed for my nail bat and sat up, brandishing it high over my shoulder, prepared to swing it in the direction of a very alarmed-looking Tad.

"Whoa!"

 _"Tad?"_ I lowered the bat, feeling more confused than anything. "What are you doing here?"

He gently shut the door behind him, and put a finger to his lips. I stayed quiet as he muttered something under his breath, making a few funny motions with his hands. As far as I could tell, nothing happened, but after a minute he said, "Okay. We're good."

"What was that?"

"That was me making sure nobody overhears us."

I very nearly laughed. Izzy was right again. "What are you doing here?" I repeated, leaning the nail bat against the wall. "I thought you were off on a secret mission."

"I was," he said. "Dad wanted to stay behind in case there was an attack on the house. Now that there's been one, he figures they won't try again anytime soon, so we're both going to off to...well. You know."

I nodded. He was still standing awkwardly by the door. "How long will you be gone?"

A familiar dark look clouded Tad's features. "Until it's done."

I nodded again, my gaze dropping to my lap. It seemed ridiculous that I should still be nervous around Tad after everything that had happened. Though maybe I wasn't really nervous. Maybe I just felt different.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," he said. "Not that I didn't believe my dad when he told me, I just...I wanted to see for myself. I mean, I wanted to...I wanted to see you."

I looked back up at him, realizing I wasn't the only nervous one here. And that seeing Tad in person gave me a much warmer, more pleasant sensation than the spinning-teacups feeling I'd had for most of the day.

"So are you?" he asked. "Okay?"

There was genuine concern in his expression, but there was also something that suggested he didn't want to keep standing there by the door. I didn't want him to, either.

But before I could formulate a response, his question sank into some deep part of me that knew everything was not okay and wouldn't be for a while. So when I opened my mouth to speak, I - without warning, and to my complete horror - burst into sudden and hysterical tears.


	6. It's My Bedroom & I'll Cry if I Want To

Chapter Six

Tad looked mortified.

I could not blame him.

Here he was, coming to check on me before he and his dad went off on a dangerous mission, and instead of being all stalwart and awesome about it, I was having a total meltdown.

It is a complete mystery to me how hormones work. You'd think if I wanted to do a bunch of gross, snotty crying, I would've done it earlier, in front of my dad. But no. Instead, the tears I'd shed earlier were tiny, genteel streams compared to the massive floods pouring out of me now. I was Niagara Falls. I was the Great Flood. I was a gigantic tidal wave of feeling - and poor Tad was the unwitting victim of my emotional disaster.

 _"Jesse,"_ he said, sounding alarmed. He moved toward me, but he only managed to get from standing helplessly next to the door to standing helplessly next to my bed.

I turned away, grabbing for my Kleenex box, and let my legs swing over the side of the bed. "I'm sorry," I managed. I wiped my cheeks and blew my nose, thinking that would help me pull myself together. But the tears just kept coming. I felt like I was _leaking;_ no matter how I tried, I couldn't get the dribbling to stop.

It was one of those times something inside me had just snapped, and I wasn't going to be able to stop crying until my body was done. "I'm sorry," I said again, around sobs. "It's j-just been such a w-weird day, and I sh-shot...I-I-I shot-"

The knowledge that I'd killed someone swept through me, and suddenly I was crying too hard to speak.

"Oh, Jesse," Tad said. Finally he sat down next to me. He put an arm around me, rubbing his hand up and down my arm. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."

If I hadn't already been a complete wreck, I think Tad's kindness would have done me in.

On some level, I knew this situation was completely embarrassing. But on another level, I was impressed that Tad was not running in the other direction. I could tell he was still a little freaked out. But he mostly seemed concerned with figuring out what he could do to help calm me down. I wanted him to figure that out, too.

So while I blubbered, he handed me tissues. He stroked my hair. Eventually he just wrapped his arms around me and let me cry into his chest.

It was amazing how I could be so completely consumed by emotion and also still completely aware of Tad. He felt so warm and solid and steady. The exact opposite of me. Forget Jesse Hauptman: fae killer. I was Jesse Hauptman: hot-ass mess.

Eventually, the monsoon of tears relented, until I was just sniffling against Tad's chest. I could practically feel the relief radiating out of him as my tears dried up.

I sat up, turning away so I could clean my face again. By the time I'd finished blowing my nose and depositing approximately my thousandth Kleenex into the trash can, I finally felt brave enough to look over at Tad again.

The front of his shirt was covered in giant wet blotches.

"Oh, God," I said, and grabbed a handful of Kleenex to dab at his shirt.

"It's fine," Tad said, as I attempted to mop up the tears. "Seriously, Jesse, it's fine."

I gave up, mostly because the Kleenex were not having any effect at all. "Okay," I said, tossing the tissues in the trash. Then it was just the two of us alone sitting on my bed.

I stared at the floor, letting my hair fall over my face to hide its splotchiness, and hugged my arms against my chest, feeling more protective than I probably should have been after all that excessive sobbing.

"So..." Tad said, clearing his throat.

"So..." I said back, glancing over at him. "Good to see you?"

To my extreme relief, Tad laughed. He reached over, brushing my hair away from my face. I felt a little self-conscious about this, because there was no way I looked attractive right now. But whatever Tad saw he apparently liked, because he gave me a very relieved smile.

"It is, actually," he said, brushing his thumb along my cheek. "I wanted to see you before we left."

My face started to flush, and I could feel something building up between us, but the moment was ruined when I gave a strange little sob-hiccup.

"Uh-oh. Have you been hitting the sauce again?" Tad joked.

"Oh, you know. Just drunk on emotion." I tried to keep the mood light, but I couldn't shake the overwhelming sense of embarrassment that had begun to set in. "I'm, um, sorry about all that. I didn't mean to go all Niagara Falls on you." I hiccupped again.

Tad's expression softened. He brushed his thumb along my cheek again. "Jesse, I heard about what happened. About...everything. It's okay for you not to be okay right now."

I looked down, biting my bottom lip. I wasn't sure how to feel about Tad knowing. He would have found out eventually, of course. And it's not like I was ashamed or anything. I'd done what I had to do.

It was just...weird.

"It doesn't feel real, you know?" I said, before I knew I was going to say anything at all. "When I think about it, it feels more like a dream. Like my brain doesn't know how to process it as reality. I've seen the wolves fight before. I know my dad and Mercy have both killed to protect the pack. It's just...it's weird that this is true about me now. You know? I keep seeing that fae-girl's face in my head. And I can't help thinking, _why?_ Why did they have to attack us? Why couldn't they just let Aiden _go_ -"

My voice cracked, and I stopped before I got all emotional again.

"I know," Tad said quietly. "Believe me, Jesse. I know."

And he did, I realized. He must have had the same thoughts every time he watched the fae torturing his dad. If they had just let Tad go - if they hadn't been so hell-bent on figuring out his powers - then Tad and Zee wouldn't be preparing to do what they were going to do right now.

I realized there was almost no one in my life who didn't have blood on their hands. Except Izzy, really. Which meant that I was no longer sure if it was weird that I'd shot someone, or if it was weirder that I'd managed to go this long without taking someone down.

I shuddered, trying not to think about all the horrible things we'd done to protect the people we loved. Tad put his arm around me again, possibly misinterpreting my shudder, and I leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder.

"I just...I don't feel like the same person I was this morning," I said.

"Maybe you're not," Tad said quietly, his thumb moving in slow circles on my shoulder. "I mean...you're definitely more of a badass now."

I laughed. It sounded a lot better coming from Tad than it had when I'd tried to joke about it earlier. I caught sight of Dread Lobster Bessie on my bedside table and leaned over, picking up the little figurine. "Well, I learned from the best."

"You kept it!" he said, sounding pleased.

I rolled my eyes. "You gave it to me _yesterday_."

"Oh. Yeah." Tad rubbed a hand over his face. "It feels like longer."

"No kidding," I muttered. Everything before tonight felt like it had happened in another lifetime. I turned Dread Lobster Bessie over in my hands a few times before I realized I was fiddling. I set her back down.

"Jesse..." He trailed off, clearing his throat again.

"Yeah?"

I looked over at him, and I couldn't decipher the expression on his face. It was almost like the way he'd looked at me in the woods the other day, like he was trying to memorize me. Only this time, he looked like he was holding himself back from something, and I wasn't sure what.

Whatever it was, it made me acutely aware of all the places our legs were touching. And the warm, solid feel of his arm around me. Everything that had been building between us in the last few days seemed to flare up in me all at once. "Jesse, I wanted to -"

I lost patience. I leaned forward and kissed him, mid-speech, and his arm tightened around me. Or maybe it had just stiffened, because in the next second he'd pulled away.

I shrank back, feeling self-conscious. Had I misread everything? No way.

Tad turned away from me. "Jesse, I shouldn't..." he said, shaking his head as if to clear it.

"Shouldn't what? Sneak into my room in the middle of the night and refuse to kiss me? I agree." A terrible thought seized me. "Are you seeing someone?"

"No," Tad said, and relief coursed through me. "But, Jesse -"

"Then what? Do you not think of me that way?"

Tad appeared to be making a great effort not to look at me. I got the sense he was about one straw from snapping under whatever stupid burden he'd laid on himself. I knew a lot about stupid, self-imposed burdens. The wolves were pretty much experts at them.

"I shouldn't feel this way about you," he blurted out.

I blinked. My cheeks flushed again, and I wasn't sure if it was from anger or something else. "Why not? Because I'm still in high school?"

"No. That's not - "

"Then am I not pretty enough? Not smart enough?"

"Jesse, _no._ "

"Then what - am I not magical enough or something?"

"No!" Tad finally looked over at me. "Jesse, that's just it. You deserve to have a more normal life. You're always going to be connected to the pack somehow, but you shouldn't have to deal with all this other stuff. And _this_ isn't going away for me anytime soon. Maybe not ever." Tad dragged his hands through his hair. "I shouldn't drag you into all this. I shouldn't..."

"I see," I said flatly. "Well you know what, Tad? Every day, I go to school and I'm reminded that I'm not mundane enough to be one of them. And then I come home and I'm reminded that I'll never be one of the pack. I don't have any powers like you or Aiden or the rest of the fae - so, basically, I don't fit in anywhere. It's too late for my life to be normal. If you're really concerned about me not getting sucked in, why do you keep sneaking into my room in the middle of the night? Why do you keep showing up and - and giving me lobsters, and - "

"Because I can't help myself," Tad said miserably. "When I heard what happened tonight, I had to see for myself if you were all right. And - and you're _not,_ Jesse." He put a shaky hand to the side of my face. I couldn't tell if it was shaking from adrenaline, or from him trying and failing to hold himself back. "I wish you'd never had to do what you did tonight. Maybe it is too late for things to be normal. But at the very least, you deserve not to be dragged further into this mess. This isn't fair to you."

"Not fair to _me?"_ I burst out. "What about you? Tad, I offed someone in self-defense. You had to watch your dad being _tortured._ It's not like either of us asked for this. You said it yourself: none of us want this shit to happen. But I want _you_. I - " I stopped, realizing what I'd said, then stammered out, "I mean, I want - I want to keep spending time with you. I -"

This was, apparently, the straw that broke Tad's back.

He buried both hands in my hair before he kissed me.

* * *

I laid awake for a long time after Tad left, replaying things over and over in my head.

It felt like my brain was having a hard time wrapping itself around reality again. Like maybe the whole thing was just an illusion I'd conjured to compensate for everything that had happened earlier in the night. It didn't seem possible that something so terrible and something so wonderful could have happened on the same day.

Except every time I thought about it, I could feel the truth rushing through me in the form of a bazillion tingles.

My brain had short-circuited when Tad kissed me. I didn't remember making any conscious decisions after that. I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking at all.

But I remembered the heat of Tad's mouth on mine. And I remembered feeling like I didn't have anything slow or gentle left in me; the whole night had been too intense, and I needed something equally intense to match it. So I kissed Tad with everything I felt, because I couldn't hold myself back. And he'd responded by wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing me until things got so heated he let out a quiet groan and pulled me into his lap.

My knees ended up on either side of his hips. I made a noise of satisfaction in the back of my throat as he pressed me close, and then I sank into him. This was what I'd needed; to be so completely wrapped up in someone I couldn't think about anything else.

I pressed myself closer and closer, and the heat kept building between us until Tad broke away, breathing hard. "Jesse..."

I was drunk on kissing; I didn't want to stop. I kissed his jaw, his neck, the base of his throat.

" _Jesse,"_ Tad said. "We shouldn't -"

"Stop saying that," I said. Following some previously unknown impulse, I gently bit his ear.

Tad let out a strangled noise. "Jesse, you're killing me here," he said. His expression was desperate, a little crazed, and suddenly I realized what he was talking about.

 _"Oh,"_ I said. I hadn't been thinking about that, but now that he mentioned it, it was kind of hard not to think of it.

I'd gone pretty far before, but never all the way. I briefly thought about what it might be like to go that far with Tad, and my entire body flushed.

I am not great at hiding what I'm thinking, and whatever Tad saw in my expression apparently did not help his situation. "Jesse, I - I need to get away from you for a second."

"Okay," I said. Before I could move, Tad had picked me up and deposited me on the bed again. He stood abruptly, but he didn't seem to want to face me. He turned and sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, his back to me.

I hugged my knees to my chest, feeling awkward.

Tad cleared his throat. "Jesse, I didn't - I mean, I _don't_ \- want things to go on like this between us."

"Oh," I said, swallowing a sudden lump in my throat. "You mean with the kissing?"

"No," he said, and his voice dropped about an octave when he said, "I wanted that." The huskiness of it made tingles erupt all over my skin.

"Then what is it?" I said, attempting to sound like I had my shit together.

"If something's going to happen between us, I want it to be right. I - I want to be able to ask you out and everything. I don't want to be sneaking around behind your dad's back."

"This is about my _dad?"_ I said incredulously.

"No! This is about you. I...you're not some girl I'd just fool around with."

I wasn't sure how to take this. "Gee, I'm flattered."

"I mean it. You're not just anyone, Jesse. You...you deserve to have this done right."

"Tad, are you asking me on a date?" I said.

The spinning teacups sensation had started to come back. But it was rudely shut down when Tad said, "I can't."

"What? But you just said - "

"I said I'd _want_ to take you out. That doesn't mean I can."

"Tad, you're not making any sense."

He stood up, turning to face me. Apparently he was okay now.

The male anatomy remained a mystery to me. I realized I was pretty much okay with that remaining true for now, so probably it was a good thing Tad had put on the brakes.

I sifted through everything he'd said so far and ventured, "You can't ask me out right now...does that mean you can when you get back?"

Tad looked pained. "Jesse, I don't know where I'm going to be or what I'm going to be doing when this is done. I don't even know how long it's going to take to deal with all of this. Which means I don't know when I'll be able to come out of hiding, or if I'll be able to go back to college. I can't even get a job right now to pay for anything. I can't-"

He looked so frustrated that I said, "Hey," and stood up. I walked over to him and tentatively reached for his hands. To my relief, he curled his fingers around mine. I thought he looked kind of relieved, too. "I know all of that, Tad. And honestly, I wasn't even thinking that far ahead. Right now, I can barely think past the next minute. So let's just...not worry about it. Let's just think about right now. You're leaving. And even if it's just for a few days, I don't want you to just disappear on me."

Tad looked at me, his thumbs moving in slow circles on the backs of my hands. He looked like he was waging another internal battle, but eventually he said, "I don't want that, either."

"Good," I said, trying to act like this hadn't made my heart go all _thwompity-thwomp-thwomp-thwomp._ "So...can I call you?"

Tad let out a surprised laugh; apparently this wasn't what he'd been expecting.

"Or maybe you'd rather call me," I said. "I mean - I don't know what your vengeance seeking schedule is going to be like."

"I don't, either," he said. He swallowed visibly, his Adam's apple bobbing. There was something absurdly sexy about this. Or maybe it was just his proximity in general; I felt much too aware of the shape of him - his broad shoulders and the line of his neck leading up to the stubble on his jaw. I wanted to run my hands over all of it. "Jesse, I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"What?" I said, snapping out of it. "Why not? Do you think your activities are going to be too nefarious for me to hear about?"

He shook his head. "No. It's more like...I already don't like the thought of leaving you, and I can't let myself be distracted right now." Even as he said this, he freed one of his hands so he could run it through my hair.

"Oh," I said. "Well..."

The next bit tumbled out as though Tad had been trying to prevent himself from saying it. "But I think it's too late, because I'm pretty much already thinking about you all the time."

My brain short-circuited again. I don't know what expression appeared on my face, but I'm pretty sure it was idiotic. "I - um - I'm kind of doing that, too," I said.

"Thinking of yourself all the time?"

"No, stupid. Of Dread Pirate Blutig."

Tad laughed. For a minute, we were both basically standing grinning at each other like idiots. At least until Tad kissed me again.

This time I stood on my toes, wrapping my arms around his neck.

This time, I also had patience. It felt more like a first kiss. Only a really good first kiss where you already know what happens next and you kind of want to fast-forward to that again, because those not-first-kisses filled some deep craving in you that you didn't even know you had.

Probably we wouldn't have gotten too carried away with the first-kiss-that-wasn't-a-first-kiss. But we didn't get a chance to find out, because before we really got into it, there was a soft knock on the door.

 _"Lieblings?"_ It was Zee. "Time to go."

Tad and I broke apart, and I looked at him in some alarm. "I thought you said the room was soundproofed!"

"It is. My dad just knows where I am. I told him I was coming to check on you."

"Oh. Right." I probably should've let go of Tad then, but I kept my arms around his neck.

"I really do have to go," Tad said, but he didn't move either.

"Okay. Um...I'll talk to you later?"

A slow smile spread across Tad's face. It was at least the third real one I'd gotten out of him tonight. "Yeah," he said, and leaned down to kiss me again.

" _Lieblings_?"

Tad gave a little grunt of irritation, and tried unsuccessfully to pull away. I irresponsibly pulled him back to me again. Twice.

In my defense, he did not put up much resistance.

" _Lieblings!_ "

"Okay. Really going now," Tad said. He gave me one more quick kiss, and then he was gone.

Leaving me to flop back ont my bed, replaying everything until it felt like the memories were permanently seared into my brain.

* * *

"O - M - F - G. How? When? Tell me everything!"

I bit off the end of a Twizzler and tried not to grin like too much of a moron.

It was Friday night, and Izzy and I were camped out in her basement, in full-out sleepover mode.

This morning, Mercy had asked me if I wanted to go to school or not. I'd been tempted to just stay at home and catch up on sleep. But after surveying the wreckage with my own eyes, I'd decided I definitely wanted to go to school. I needed to put some distance between myself and the battle last night. I needed something that felt, well, normal.

Also, I realized that maybe I needed a little more normal than just a day at school. So I'd asked if I could spend the night at Izzy's.

There had been some debate about this. Dad was opposed, because Izzy's house was not protected by the pack, and he already felt like the pack was spread too thin. But Warren had overheard us talking, and he'd offered to be the lookout for me at Izzy's tonight. Which I was super grateful for - as long as he promised not to eavesdrop on us.

Warren had chuckled at that. "Don't you worry, darlin'. I'm not there to crash the party. I'm just there to make sure you stay safe."

I think possibly Warren had volunteered because he felt guilty for not having been at the house to help with the fae attack last night. I felt a little guilty that Warren was sacrificing a Friday night with Kyle to be my babysitter. But then again, he'd volunteered, so I couldn't feel too bad about it.

And now that I was here, I was extra grateful for Warren's gallantry, because I needed this. I hadn't even realized how much I'd needed it until Izzy and I were in our pajamas, eating junk food, and gabbing away without having to worry about being either overheard or interrupted, for the first time in what felt like forever.

I'd already spilled the beans about the attack on the house at lunchtime. Izzy had known something was off, particularly when I'd texted to ask about having an emergency sleepover. I'd had to explain why the sleepover was at her house instead of mine. Izzy knew as well as anyone how paranoid my dad was about having me sleep other places when there was a threat on the pack.

It would have been impossible to keep from telling Izzy about Tad at lunch, too, except we'd been interrupted like three times, and the revelation that I didn't hate Aiden anymore was enough to keep us occupied until the bell rang.

Which meant that I'd been able to wait until now to announce casually over junk food, "Sooo...I kissed Tad last night."

At which Izzy freaked out. "How can you keep these things from me?!" she went on, after declaring O-M-F-G. "I'm your best friend! I would've texted you immediately!"

"It was two AM," I pointed out.

"No excuses. Spill."

So I did. Mostly. I told her about the sob-fest and all the highlights afterward, but it didn't seem necessary to go into all the confusing bits where Tad was waffling about whether to like me or not. Or about the, uh, super intense moment that I wasn't even sure how to talk about out loud.

"Omigod, Iz. It was like the best. Kiss. Ever." I flopped back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. "It felt like my brain fell out of my body. And there was heat, like, _everywhere_."

"Whoa," Izzy said.

"I know! I can't even...I didn't think it would feel like this."

"What did you think it would feel like? Kissing Mr. I'm-So-Cool-I'm-In-College-Now?" she said, referring to my ex-boyfriend Gabriel.

"Well...technically they're both in college now."

"You and your older men," Izzy teased. "So what was different about it? Is Tad just more experienced?"

"I don't know. I feel like I shouldn't be comparing them," I said. "It's just...I liked Gabriel a _lot_. And I think...I feel like I might like Tad even more."

"More? As in _more_ more? Like, the most you can like someone before you should really start calling it something else more?"

"No. I don't know," I said, covering my face with my hands. I wasn't sure why I was telling her this. I didn't even know I'd been _thinking_ this. "Iz, this is crazy."

"Crazy how?"

I sat up and grabbed another Twizzler. "I mean, the whole thing is crazy. I've known Tad for nine years. That's literally half my life. And in all those years, nothing like this has remotely come up between us. I don't know where this is coming from."

Izzy quirked an eyebrow at me. "Are you sure about that? You said at the barbeque, and I quote, _we always flirt like this."_

"Okay. I guess that's true. But, Iz, this is the first time it's ever felt like there's anything behind the flirting. And that's crazy because on Sunday, everything felt normal between us. And now it's Friday and everything has changed. It hasn't even been a _week_. How do you explain that? How did it come on so fast?"

Izzy shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe this was building up between you guys all along, and it just didn't have a chance to manifest until now."

"Maybe," I said thoughtfully. "I just wish it hadn't happened now. This is, like, the worst timing ever."

"Is it? I mean - he is kind of living in your house. That's pretty convenient."

"Yeah. When he's not off to hunt down the faeries who tortured his dad."

"Okay, well, there are always going to be obstacles. 'The course of true love never did run smooth,' and all that."

"Let's not get carried away with the true love talk."

"Oh, darling," Izzy said sagely, digging into the M&M's, " _I_ am not the one getting carried away here."

* * *

Tad called at midnight. I almost missed it because Izzy and I were too busy having a late night jam session, singing along to a random Spotify playlist at the top of our lungs. Izzy was the one who actually spotted my phone lighting up.

"It's TAD!" she announced, and I snatched it up.

"Hey!" I said, motioning for Izzy to turn the music down.

"Hey," he said. Even though I could barely hear it over the music, the sound of his voice still made my heart go all _thwompy-thwomp-thwomp_. "I wasn't sure you'd be up. Where are you?"

"I'm at Izzy's," I said, as the music went blaringly loud.

"Whoops - sorry!" Izzy said, and the sound finally went down. "Hi Tad!"

"Izzy says hi."

"Hi back. Am I interrupting you guys?"

"No! No. We were just - we're having a girls' night. A sleepover. At Izzy's house. Hang on a sec."

He hung on while Izzy and I had a mostly mimed conversation that resulted in me shutting myself in her dad's office, which was built into one corner of the basement.

"Okay," I said. "Sorry. Just wanted to get some privacy for a sec."

"I can't really talk long," Tad said. "But it's been a crazy day, and I just...well, I wanted to say hi."

"Hi," I said. "Um...Guten tag. Konichiwa. Aloha. Wingapo!"

Tad laughed. "Wingapo? What language is that?"

"That is a great question. It's how Pocahontas says hello. I really feel like I should know what tribe Pocahontas is from."

I felt like I should know more about Native American history in general, especially considering Mercy is personally related to Coyote.

"Pocahontas was Algonquain. I think," Tad said.

"They really should have covered that in the movie," I said. "I bet this is totally what you called to talk about."

"It is, actually," Tad said. "Exactly this."

We'd gone from smilling at each other like idiots in person to smiling at each other like idiots over the phone. "So..."

"So," he said, clearing his throat. "Tell me something good that happened today."

I told him what felt like some very unimportant and trivial things, considering he was out on a life-or-death mission. But he seemed to enjoy me going on about random good things in my day. He wanted to know what junk food we were eating, what songs we'd been listening to. What pajamas I was wearing.

"You did not just ask me what I'm wearing!"

"What? I'm just trying to pretend like I'm there. Are you wearing the little shorts you had on yesterday?"

"Inappropriate," I told him.

"Oh, come on. You should see the place I'm staying. So depressing. If you could see it, you'd want to cheer me up."

"Uh-huh," I told him. "I'm wearing a onesie. With Care Bears on it." I wasn't, obviously; I was wearing plaid pajama pants and a faded T-shirt.

"Don't make me think inappropriate thoughts about the Care Bears."

"Then don't keep your mind in the gutter!"

We went on like this for a few more minutes until Tad said, "I should probably go."

It took us longer than it should have to say good-bye.

After I hung up, I realized Izzy was right. As usual.

I was so carried away, I was like a boat trapped in a current that had already swept me miles out to sea. And I had no intention of turning and heading back for the shore.

* * *

A/N: The end!

Just kidding. There will be more in another few weeks or so, when I get a chance to write again.

Thanks for reading! I just wanted to share something really quick with you guys. While I was writing this chapter, I became super obsessed with the "Icarus and the Sun" series by Gabriel Picolo. This picture in particular got stuck in my head (ff is weird about links, so you'll have to create actual dots here, etc) picolo-kunDOTdeviantartDOTcom/art/Icarus-and-the-Sun-680970847

I wanted to try to capture the feeling of this drawing in the romance scene with Jesse and Tad. It's pretty sexy, so I may have gotten a little carried away. Or possibly not carried away enough? I can't decide. Either way, I hope you enjoyed. :)))

Thanks for the reviews and follows, guys! You make my day. Special shout-out to NightlyRowenTree for being awesome and reviewing always. :-)


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Izzy and I stayed up absurdly late, talking about life, the universe, and everything, and in the morning, I roused myself absurdly early so that Warren could take me home. I felt like a total zombie, but all in all, it had been worth it.

"I owe you one," I told Warren as he dropped me off. He waved this off, but I made a mental note to get him something exceptional for his birthday.

My only real plan for Saturday was to get a few more hours of shut-eye - which I did, very successfully. By the time I woke up, it was mid-afternoon, and a good portion of the pack had arrived to assist with cleanup from the fae battle. I'd just polished off a sandwich and was preparing to pitch in when Mercy said, "Hey, Jesse. Let's you and me have a chat."

"Okay," I said. I was pretty sure I wasn't in trouble, but I still got that feeling of dread I'm pretty sure everyone gets whenever a parental unit expresses interest in having a chat about something.

Mercy waved me to the backyard, and we strolled far enough away from the house so we wouldn't be overheard.

"So," I said, perching on one of my mom's ill-fated decorative boulders. "What's up?"

Somehow, sitting on the rock and talking to Mercy triggered memories of all the times I'd visited Mercy in her trailer, where I used to perch on her kitchen counter to chat. And occasionally grill her for information about what was going on with the pack. Mercy hadn't always had the answers, but she usually knew more than I did, and she'd trusted me to handle way more information than my dad had been willing to give me.

For a long time, I'd thought of Mercy as this cool aunt I'd never had. I would say it was weird now, having Mercy as my stepmom, except I'm pretty sure I knew Mercy and my dad were going to get together way before Mercy did.

On the downside, Mercy could no longer act as a semi-neutral third party when it came to disseminating information about the pack. But on the plus side, Mercy had mellowed my dad out a _lot._ Having her around also meant that she occasionally convinced my dad it would be better if she had a girl chat with me about something, as opposed to him trying to lay down the law in a way that did not go over well.

I got the feeling this was one of those times.

"So," Mercy said. "First things first, I want you to know we appreciate the way you're handling all this, Jesse. Not that we're surprised. But this situation isn't easy, and you're handling it like a champ."

I shrugged. "Well, where's the fun in easy? We like a life of danger and intrigue, we Hauptmans."

"And this is why we're lucky to have you," Mercy said. "Not that we wouldn't be lucky to have you in any case."

"Well, thanks," I said, getting the sense she was buttering me up for something. "I feel like there's a 'but' coming."

"No buts," Mercy said. "A couple of _ands,_ though."

"Okay," I said. I wondered if my dad had found the nail bat hidden behind my bed.

Mercy seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "With everything going on, I can understand you needing to confide in someone about all this."

I blinked. "Oh," I said. "I mean, yeah, I've been confiding in Izzy. But I haven't told her anything it's not safe for her to know, I promise."

"I know. I trust you. But I'm not talking about Izzy."

Despite my best efforts, I could feel my cheeks flush. " _Oh_ ," I said. Maybe Mercy wasn't thinking what I was thinking. I mean, as far as she knew, Tad and I had only gone for a walk in the woods that one day. Right?

Apparently not.

Mercy said, "I'm glad you and Tad have gotten a chance to spend some time together lately. Tad's been...not quite himself since he got back. But the last couple times I've seen him, he's seemed...happier."

"Oh?" I said again, attempting to sound like this insight did not affect me in any way.

"Which is good," Mercy said. "And I would like to reiterate that we trust you. And I trust Tad. Which is why we're having this conversation now instead of the middle of the night."

 _Aughhh_. _Busted._

I resisted the urge to bury my face in my hands, even though my face was probably as bright red as Dread Lobster Bessie's shell.

On the plus side, I was now 100% certain that Tad's spell had worked, because if my dad had caught so much as a hint of us...uh, _not_ talking...well. Like Mercy said: we would not be having this conversation casually on Saturday afternoon.

"So I guess you...heard us talking?" I ventured. My voice came out much closer to a squeak than I'd intended.

"Actually," Mercy said, "I woke up when I felt somebody casting a spell. A few minutes later, I heard Zee knocking on your door. Followed by Tad coming out into the hall. Which means that _apparently_ Tad knows how to soundproof your room." Mercy gave me a pointed look.

"Nothing happened," I blurted out. "I mean - um - nothing for you to worry about. Nothing inappropriate. We - um -"

Mercy held up her hand. "You're not in trouble." She sighed. "Considering the circumstances, I can understand why Tad's only chance to see you would have been in the middle of the night. I can also understand how hard it can be to get privacy around here."

"But?" I prompted, and Mercy gave me a wry look.

"But," she conceded, "unless I'm totally mistaken, things between you and Tad are...different now."

I fiddled with my shirt sleeves, staring down at the grass. For once, it felt a little weird, talking about things with Mercy. I knew she thought of Tad as a sort of younger-brother figure. And I was her stepdaughter. Would she think it was inappropriate? Or that I was too young for him? Or...?

Mercy didn't say anything, just waited. I knew there was no point lying to her - she was as good a lie detector as any of the wolves - but I wasn't sure what to say. Now that I was no longer alone in my bedroom with Tad, consumed by hormones, I realized that I agreed with him. If anything was going to happen between us, we needed to do it right. Tad was too close to Mercy, too close to the pack.

I also realized that I wished we'd figured out exactly what was going on between us before my dad or Mercy knew about it, because I was _so_ not ready to have this conversation.

"I'm not sure what's going on, exactly," I said, still staring down at the ground. "I mean, it's not really anything. Not that it's _nothing._ It's, just, you know, not defined yet. I don't - um -"

"You don't have to tell me," Mercy said gently. "But I'm guessing you can understand why it's probably not the best idea for Tad to be sneaking into your room in the middle of the night."

"Of course," I said. "Yes. Totally get it."

"Your dad will be relieved to hear it."

"I bet," I said.

There was another awkward silence. "Well. That's all I had," said Mercy.

"Okay! Um...I'm gonna go help with the cleanup."

And then possibly hide in my room avoiding my dad for the rest of the year.

I hopped off the rock, aware that I was being completely awkward. But I couldn't turn the awkward off, so I just hurried back into the house, feeling weirdly relieved at the thought of manual labor.

* * *

Tad called at midnight.

"Do you ever call at normal hours?" I teased.

"Normal hours are for normal people. I'm exceptional," Tad said.

"I thought you were going to say _supernatural_."

"That, too," he agreed. "Did I wake you up?"

"No. But you did interrupt an extremely important YouTube marathon." After spending most of the day helping with cleanup, I'd flopped onto my bed and had been unwilling to do anything besides stare at my phone for approximately the last two hours.

"Uh-oh. Should I go?" Tad joked.

"No point. You already interrupted the world record YouTube streak I was going for. I'll just have to start over when we hang up."

"Well, at least you have goals."

"You bet. After this, I'm going for the world record in highest number of video game deaths perpetrated by a giant mutant lobster."

Tad laughed. "I'm pretty sure you've already got that one."

"And don't you forget it," I said. It was absurd how much I enjoyed talking nonsense with him. "So. How are you?"

"Oh, you know." Tad sighed. "Tired, mostly. We haven't slept much the last couple days."

"No rest for the villain-hunters?"

"Something like that," Tad said. "How about you?"

"That is a great question," I said. "One sec."

I hopped off the bed and turned on the three fans and the noisemaker I kept strategically positioned around my room. They were not an absolute soundproof guarantee, but Mercy had helped me set them up one day, assuring me that if I kept my voice low, I'd be able to have privacy during personal phone calls.

"Is it raining there?" Tad said.

"Nope. That's my noisemaker. The closest I can get to non-magical soundproofing."

"Soundproofing? Are you afraid I'll say something inappropriate? Or...that _you'll_ say something inappropriate?"

"No."

"Dang. I was really holding out for that second one."

I rolled my eyes, but I laughed, too. "Actually, I'm just trying to make sure nobody overhears me telling you...we're busted."

"Busted?"

"Yep. Apparently our clandestine late-night meet-up was not clandestine enough." I gave him a run-down of the conversation I'd had with Mercy that afternoon. I could practically hear Tad wincing over the phone.

"Oh, man," he said, groaning. "I should have warned Mercy beforehand. I should've told her-"

"Told her _what?"_ I said. "That you wanted to come visit my room in the middle of the night?"

"No. I don't know. I just...I wanted to see you, and I didn't think it through. I should've been more careful."

Tad's guilt monster was rearing its ugly head again. I had the impulse to tell him to knock it off, but instead I found myself saying, "I like it when you're not so careful. I mean - when it comes to secret missions, yes. But when it comes to me..." I trailed off, thinking about what it had felt like to be sitting on his lap with his arms wrapped tight around me.

Tad was silent for a moment. He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded a lot lower when he said, "My mind is going interesting places right now, Jesse."

"Oh?" I swallowed, feeling a strange flush run all the way through me. "Like where?"

"Like..." He trailed off, and I could practically hear him giving himself a shake over the phone. "Like how I want to take you out. For real. I don't know when, Jesse, but I'll figure something out."

"You are so old-fashioned," I said. "I find it oddly attractive."

"I find everything about you attractive," Tad said, so quickly I got the sense it had tumbled out before he could stop himself.

I bit my lip, staring up at the ceiling and grinning like an idiot. "I wish you could sneak into my room right now."

"And risk the wrath of Mercy?"

"I'd risk more than that." I was pretty sure I was in the same state of mind Tad was. It felt a little bit like being drunk; the thoughts were just coming out before I had time to process whether I should actually say them or not.

Tad was quiet for a minute before he finally said, "I'd risk more than that, too."

Warmth rushed to my cheeks, and then I was grinning like an idiot again.

* * *

Tad didn't call the next day. But Baba Yaga did.

" _Baba Yaga?_ Really?" I mouthed to Mercy as my dad took the phone.

"Really," Mercy mouthed back, and then we all stood there eavesdropping while my dad talked to her.

 _We_ included Aiden, who I was finally getting used to having around. In fact, now that Aiden and I were allies, I was hoping I'd eventually be able to learn a little more about his whole history with Underhill. I wasn't in a place to ask about it yet, but we were getting there.

The news wasn't great: my dad and Mercy had been summoned to a meeting with the fae. They talked Aiden out of going with them, which I thought was probably a good move. An hour or so after they left, I got a text from Izzy.

 _R U SEEING THIS?!_

Me: _S_ _eeing what?_

Izzy: _Cable Bridge is gone. All over EVERYTHING_

I blinked at my phone.

"What?" Aiden said, seeing my expression. We'd been hanging out in the rec room while Ben walked him through some finer points of ISTDPBF.

"Cable Bridge," I said, feeling numb. "Turn on the news."

Ben snatched the remote and turned on the giant TV on the wall. "If those bloody wankers have summoned another bloody troll - "

But there wasn't a troll on the bridge. Or anything else, for that matter. The news was showing the same clip over and over: the river rising up and dragging Cable Bridge down into its depths. Ben let out a string of words I hadn't heard before. Which was impressive, even from Ben.

"Did the _frogging_ fae do that?" Ben demanded. He didn't really say frogging. He was asking Aiden, but Aiden was just staring at the TV, lost in thought.

"It must have been one of the Gray Lords," I said slowly. "But I don't know which one."

"It hardly farting matters which one! If the fae can fight like that -"

"Just one of them can," I pointed out.

"If _one of them_ can control rivers with his mind, why in the sodding blue nancies have those liver-lilied puddle muckers been fudging around with us all week? First the filthy troll, then the attack on the house..."

"This wasn't an attack," Aiden said quietly. "It was a show of power. The Gray Lords must be willing to make a compromise."

"That? _That_ 's their soggy idea of compromise?" said Ben.

"It must be," I said, realizing Aiden was right. "The bridge was closed. The Gray Lords knew there was no one on it. This...this must be what they're meeting with Dad and Mercy about. The timing's too coincidental." I stood up and started pacing. "The Gray Lords wanted my dad there to see this. Which means that whatever they are about to do, they want people to know it's not because they were scared. Especially not of the werewolves."

Ben watched me pace for a minute, then remarked, "It's scary how much you remind me of your dad sometimes."

"Thanks," I said absently. A comparison to the Alpha from any of the wolves was high praise. But I was still working out exactly what the fae had destroyed the bridge for. I stopped and turned to Aiden abruptly. "The fae can't go back to Underhill, can they?"

Aiden shook his head _no_ , confirming this. "Underhill is too dangerous for them right now. For a time, she let them dwell in her borders again. But now...I think Underhill may never be safe for them again."

He didn't add _especially as long as I'm here_ , but I could see it in his expression.

"So the only place for them to live is totally in the human realm."

"So it would seem," Aiden agreed.

"What're you lot getting at?" Ben said.

"The reservations aren't that big, land-wise," I said. "From what I've heard, the only reason all the fae can fit on them is because there are doors to Underhill. But if Underhill's not safe - "

"Everybody has to share," Ben said, catching on. "And if the troll's any indication, the fae are bloody bad at sharing."

I looked back at Aiden. "So there are fae gunning for war."

"I am sure there are fae who want to wipe out the humans entirely," Aiden said.

"But not the Gray Lords," I said, still pacing. "If the Gray Lords wanted a war, they could not only have it, they could _win_ it. Well, probably," I amended, thinking of nuclear bombs. "But they don't want a war. They want to make peace, but without looking weak."

"So bye-bye, Cable Bridge," Ben said. "Oy, hang on. Aren't we trying to keep Aiden away from the Gray Lords? Why in filthy mucking bogs are they the ones suing for peace?"

"They want Aiden because Underhill wants Aiden," I said, glancing at Aiden to confirm this. "But they're not, you know, genocidal. They're...they're the ones who wanted the fae to start marrying humans. Because too many fae were starting to die off." Basically, they were the reason Tad existed. "I guess they must have developed a soft spot for humans in the process," I reasoned. Or at least - the ones who hadn't been holding Tad hostage must have.

"Soft spot might be an exaggeration for most of them," Aiden said. "But it's probably basically right."

I raised an eyebrow at him. "Thanks for the endorsement."

"You know, it's a bit scary how much you know about the fae for someone who's not supposed to know anything at all," Ben commented.

Aiden narrowed his eyes. "That's true. The fae wouldn't be pleased if they knew how much you know."

"I'll be sure to avoid bringing it up the next time I'm at a cocktail mixer with the Gray Lords," I said.

"What?" Aiden said.

"Never mind. Bad joke."

When Dad and Mercy got home later, they more or less confirmed everything I'd guessed. I was dying to talk to Tad about all this, but he didn't call that night. He just sent me a text that said he was okay, which at least kept me from worrying about him excessively. But it didn't keep me from having a dull little ache in my chest from missing him, that wouldn't go away.

* * *

Generally speaking, I did not moon over guys.

I mean, there might've been the occasional mooning when it came to certain actors of the superhero persuasion. But I'd never been the type to get all ga-ga over anybody. The few times I'd had fluttery, slightly dopey feelings about a guy, I still tended to keep my head on pretty straight.

I wasn't a cynic. But I think something about watching my parents split up at the tender age of nine made me realize that the fluttery feelings don't last forever. And I firmly believed that just because you liked someone didn't mean you had to surrender your brain to hormones.

Which meant I was pretty astonished to realize, over the next couple days, that my brain had adjusted to basically two settings:

1\. Talking to Tad

2\. Waiting for Tad to call

It was a little pathetic. But not quite as pathetic as it sounds.

For one thing, it's not like I spent my whole day staring at my phone willing it to ring. Hellllooooo, I still had a life.

But after a couple days, I realized I'd gotten into the habit of replaying conversations with Tad in my head while I got ready for school in the morning. Sometimes I got so distracted I lost track of where I was in the middle of flossing and had to start over again.

I had the opposite problem during class. I found myself paying more attention to my note-taking than usual, so I didn't spend all day worrying about whether Tad was in mortal peril.

After school, I'd catch myself staring at the clock approximately once every five minutes while I did my homework, counting down the seconds until Tad contacted me.

On top of this, I'd also managed to replay our midnight makeout session about a thousand times in my head. I kept thinking I shouldn't, like maybe I'd wear out the memory if I took it out and examined it too many times. I also had a slight fear that if I thought about kissing him too much, I'd turn into some sort of sappy weirdo, like Lavender Brown in the sixth Harry Potter book, who for some reason thought it was appropriate to go around calling her boyfriend _Won-Won!_ and wanting to suck face with him, like, all of the time.

"Omigod, you are not Lavender Brown," Izzy said at lunch on Tuesday, when I finally voiced this fear. "The only reason we're even _talking_ about Tad right now is because, as usual, I have successfully pried the information out of you with my metaphorical best-friend crowbar."

This was true. I'd been feeling so embarrassed about how much I'd been thinking about Tad that for the last few days I'd refused to bring him up at all.

"Well...just because I'm not mentioning him doesn't mean I'm not thinking about him," I said, picking at the crust of my sandwich.

"It would honestly be weird if you _weren't_ thinking about him."

"Yeah, but I mean like... _constantly_. All the time. Too much."

Izzy squinted at me, evidently performing some sort of best friend ESP, because the next thing she said was, "Jesse?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not turning into your mom."

"Okay," I said. I was simultaneously impressed by Izzy's mind-reading skills and also not convinced she was correct.

Because as much as I'd been thinking about Tad, I'd also had a lot of nagging worries in the back of my head, and they pretty much all had to do with my mom. My mom was an expert at getting involved with guys too deeply too fast. And the results had been...not spectacular.

"I mean it," Izzy went on. "You're not jumping into this head first just because you want a guy around, or whatever."

In this case, we both knew that _or_ _whatever_ meant that my mom specifically wanted a guy around to clean up all the messes she didn't want to deal with. She still roped my dad into doing this on a regular basis, because she knew his Alpha-werewolf instincts wouldn't allow him to do anything less. Exhibit A: My mom's current location in the Bahamas. Aka as far away as my dad could reasonably get her on short notice.

"Okay, maybe I'm not my mom," I said. "But maybe I'm just as bad in a different way. I mean, what if I'm jumping into this head-first because of danger and peril? I think all the fighting-to-the-death in my place of residence might have given my hormones a false sense of urgency."

"Naaah," Izzy said. "Well, okay, maybe a little. But I don't see the problem with that. Because I think we can all agree that Tad is not one of your mom's awful boyfriends. I mean, he's definitely not going to turn into an evil lava monster and start stalking you or anything."

"You don't know that," I joked.

Izzy rolled her eyes. "You're hopeless. And also in denial, if you think this is anything but a good thing."

"Of course it's a good thing," I said, because I could not deny that everything about Tad was good. "It's just...I don't feel quite like myself, Iz. Or maybe it's that I feel like myself, but on crack."

"His love, his love, his love is your drug?" Izzy quoted.

"Old-school Ke$ha. A poet for the ages," I agreed.

"Well, all I can say is: if it's happening, just let it happen. And if you start to act like Lavender Brown, I will stage an intervention."

"That would be appreciated," I said.

Then Izzy switched back to her favorite topic: trying to figure out what magical artifact we could possibly give the fae to appease them. This was, apparently, the fae's main demand, given that we refused to return Aiden to their less-than-tender keeping.

Izzy didn't have any better idea what sort of magical artifact would make the fae happy than I did, but we had a lot of fun coming up with outrageous items that probably didn't exist, and this kept my brain from going back to its constant Tad-loop until the bell rang.

* * *

On Tuesday night, Baba Yaga called again.

We had just finished dinner, so Aiden and I were able to sloooowly clean off the kitchen table while Mercy talked on the phone. My dad stood there in a state of extreme tension, listening in. I had no desire to be a werewolf, but sometimes I wished I had supernatural hearing that I could turn on and off at will.

However, in this case, it wasn't hard to deduce the purpose of Baba Yaga's call. She was giving Mercy hints about how to find an artifact that would appease the fae.

Having an Alpha werewolf for a dad meant I'd grown up knowing a fairly interesting array of supernatural allies. It wasn't until Mercy came into our lives that I realized knowing a bunch of wolves and our local witch was only the tip of the iceberg.

Mercy didn't just attract allies, either, like my dad did - she had downright _admirers_. Apparently being the daughter of Coyote with a heart of gold was like catnip to people who'd lived for hundreds or thousands of years.

Anyway.

The outrageous result of Baba Yaga's call was that Aiden volunteered to obtain a fae artifact we could use to bargain with the fae. But in order to obtain it, he would have to return to Underhill. Along with - apparently - my dad and Mercy.

I attempted to contain my sudden sense of gut-wrenching fear and doom with something as non-emotional as possible: logic. I'm not sure if this is something I learned from my dad or just a personal coping mechanism, but the more something scares me, the more matter-of-fact I tend to get. "Okay. You, I understand," I said, pointing to my dad. "You can keep everyone safe. Aiden has to go in, but why Mercy? Why not Zee, who is fae, or Tad, who is nearly fae? Or another werewolf?"

Not that I wanted Tad or one of the pack to go in, either. In fact, I didn't want _any_ of them to go in. Underhill was too dangerous. The whole idea was crazy. _Aiden_ was crazy for volunteering to go back.

I felt like I could hardly argue with Aiden, considering his entire reason for going was that he wanted to keep me safe. But I was not in favor of this whole my-parents-had-to-go-with-him plan.

So I tried to put it in Dread Pirate's Booty terms everybody would understand, and informed my dad that, even though he was the muscle in this boarding party, he was not a sacrificial tank, and everybody had better get home safe _or else._ I even made a joke about how I couldn't live with my mom or we'd kill each other.

But underneath it all, I was just scared. Because it never got easier to watch my dad go off into life-threatening situations.

And this time, I was determined, they would not leave me behind.

* * *

It was hard to concentrate on my homework that night. It was hard to concentrate on anything. I kept staring at my phone, hoping Tad would call, and that he would have some sort of magical fae artifact solution. Anything would be better than this crazy let's-go-steal-something-from-Underhill mission.

But Tad didn't call, and I fell asleep with knots in my stomach, worrying about him and my dad and Mercy and Aiden and Zee. I had a dream in which we were all in Mercy's VW van, driving over Cable Bridge, only the bridge kept collapsing and reappearing and then collapsing again, so the whole dream was just falling without ever reaching bottom.

Eventually, I drifted off into deeper sleep, and when I woke up, things were better.

Because Tad and Zee had returned in the middle of the night.

And they helped convince my dad to let me go to the fae reservation, where I was prepared to wait however long it took for them to come back to me.

* * *

It was a pretty agonizing car ride.

For one thing, we were driving toward something extremely dangerous that could end in a variety of horrible, terrible, very bad ways.

And for another, Tad was in the car, like literally three feet behind me, and I couldn't touch him. In fact, I hadn't touched him all morning. Not even a hug.

If Tad had just shown up with Zee out of the blue, I probably could've gotten away with hugging him in front of everyone, and passed it off as sheer excitement. But as it happened, Tad and Zee hadn't shown their faces until we'd finished eating breakfast. Which meant that they'd appeared in the middle of a heated argument about whether or not I'd be allowed to go to the fae reservation, when I was in no mood to hug anyone.

There'd only been time for me to lock eyes with him across the kitchen, and feel all the angst and worry from the last five days drain out of me at seeing that he was safe.

Unfortunately, there was plenty of brand-new angst and worry to go around. The air in my dad's car was thick with tension, which was only broken when Mercy struck up a conversation with Aiden.

About Underhill, of all things.

I joined in, though, asking Aiden questions - partly because I needed to do something to keep my mind occupied, and partly because I realized that it calmed my nerves to hear what Aiden knew. If I had some clue as to what they'd be doing in Underhill, I could try to imagine where they were on their quest, and what they were up to at a given moment. Not that it would help me figure out the timing of their return, of course. But at least it was something to grasp onto, instead of envisioning them heading off into a complete blank unknown.

One of the worst things about them going into Underhill, though, was that we had _no idea_ when they would return. However much time passed for them in Underhill, the time that passed out here would be completely different. For all we knew, they could be gone for days. Or weeks. Or even longer.

I was trying not to think about it.

So instead, I listened to Aiden talk about why Underhill was mad at him, and what Underhill's game was. It sounded like a pretty gruesome game. My one consolation was that at least Aiden knew how to play it. And Mercy and my dad had a proven track record of beating people at their own games.

* * *

I'd never been to one of the fae reservations before. Despite the circumstances, I couldn't help looking around with interest as we drove behind our horse-mounted escorts, past a creepy looking guard fence, and into...a super boring-looking suburb.

Not even kidding. It was like the fae had looked at a map of Smalltown, USA and made an extremely unimaginative-looking copy. I knew there were a lot more important things going on right now, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed. This place was literally full of magical people. Where was all the magic?

My question was answered when we were ushered into a small, extremely ugly building - and found ourselves in a huge-ass room with a fancypants marble floor and giant marble columns.

"It's a TARDIS!" I said, and then had to explain to Aiden what the TARDIS was.

By the time I finished explaining, we were in a book-lined office talking to one of the Gray Lords. Zee said something pointed about making sure I was protected while I was here, and the Gray Lord agreed. Which was good, I was sure. Especially knowing what had happened to Tad, Zee, and Aiden at the hands of the fae on this very reservation, I had to be grateful for any pledges of protection I got from an actual fae here.

But at the same time, I thought all the worrying about my safety was unnecessary, considering that once my dad, Mercy, and Aiden departed for Underhill, I would be the safest person in our entire group.

I tried not to dwell on this as they went over the contract and signed a bunch of things. I was doing pretty well at keeping it together until it was time for them to go, and then Mercy turned to me and put both her lamb necklace and the chain with my dad's dog tags on it around my neck.

"These are our promise to you," she said, "that we'll do our best to get back to you if we can. That we will do our best and expect the same from you."

It took everything in me not to burst into tears.

What kind of promise is that to make to somebody? That you'll do your best to get back to them _if you can_? If you're making a promise, shouldn't you be promising to get back to somebody _no matter what_?

But I knew what they were heading into. I knew that Mercy had been careful to make the truest promise she could have made. Because of course they would try to get back to me. But there was no guarantee they could.

So I blinked back tears and kept holding it together while my dad changed into his werewolf form. And then we were suddenly at the entrance to Underhill. And I made Aiden promise not to get stuck in Underhill, and said good-bye to everyone.

And then they were gone, and it was just me, Tad, Zee, and the Gray Lord, and I'd never felt more alone.

* * *

Zee insisted on finding someplace more comfortable to wait. I was so consumed with worry I don't think I would have cared if we'd all just stayed there staring at the doorway until they returned. But Zee pointed out that we didn't actually know which doorway they'd be returning through, so I nodded and followed him out of the room.

My dad had never been this far out of reach before. Even when I'd been kidnapped all those years ago, I could still imagine where he was in the world. We were still in the same dimension, where at least I knew that the number of seconds ticking by for him were the same number of seconds that ticked by for me.

Tad fell into step beside me and took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. Nothing could take away the fear, but some of the tension in me unspooled from touching him. I held onto his hand tightly as the Gray Lord led us to what looked like a little apartment, complete with a small kitchen, cozy sitting room, and adjoining bedroom. The Gray Lord left, and then it was just the three of us.

Zee lit a fire in the fireplace. Tad led me to the sitting room couch, where we sat down.

No one tried to tell me it was going to be okay, which I appreciated. In fact, nobody said anything at all for a while. Then Zee announced, "All right, _lieblings_ , this old man is going to rest for a while. Yell if it looks like someone's trying to kill you."

He was joking. I think.

And then the door to the bedroom was shut and Zee was gone and it was just the two of us.

I was silent for a minute, just staring at the fire, until Tad said, "Jesse..." and I turned to him.

"I hate this," I said.

"I know."

And then I threw my arms around him, burying my face in his shoulder, and he wrapped his arms tight around me. Everything was still terrible, but he was warm and steady and reassuring and I felt better for a moment, just a little.


	8. The Best Activity Ever Invented

Chapter Eight

Waiting to find out whether people you love were going to live or not might have been the worst activity ever invented. It was definitely right up there with watching someone you love being tortured, or actually losing someone you love for good.

I couldn't dwell on the possibility that my dad, Mercy, and Aiden might not return. I was pretty sure that if I did, I'd go insane. So I had to focus on what was right in front of me. And at the moment, that meant Tad.

I still had my arms wrapped around him, my face pressed into his shoulder.

"We have to stop meeting like this," I said, my voice slightly muffled against his shirt.

Tad laughed softly, rubbing his hand up and down my back. "We haven't had great luck lately, it's true." I could feel the vibration of his voice rumbling through his chest. There was something so soothing about this that I just wanted to stay curled up against him for hours.

Only I couldn't, because I was already starting to get a crick in my neck. I sat up, shifting to a more comfortable position. I didn't pull away much, though, because I didn't really want there to be distance between us.

"I'm glad you're back," I said quietly. "It's bad enough thinking about my dad and Mercy being in mortal peril. If I were still worrying about you, too..."

A dark look flickered across Tad's face. "Trust me, Jesse, I wasn't the one in danger."

"Right. Because it's not like the fae responsible for torturing your dad are dangerous or anything," I said dryly.

 _"Were_ dangerous," Tad muttered, then looked like he regretted it. "Never mind. The less you know about all this, the better."

"I think it's a little late for that," I said. "I take it Zee didn't hold back when you found them?"

Tad didn't answer, which I took to mean _yes._ I didn't know much about Zee's days as the Dark Smith of Drontheim, but I knew he'd been a super badass villain type. And with the way everyone talked, I was pretty sure he was powerful enough to be one of the Gray Lords.

"That must have been something to see," I said quietly.

Tad just stared at me for a minute, his expression indecipherable. "Jesse, you are one of a kind. Do you know that?"

"One of a kind, as in...I'm the only daughter of an Alpha werewolf you know who also has a coyote shifter for a stepmom?"

He shook his head. "One of a kind, as in I can talk to you about anything. Even things you're not supposed to know about."

I'd been talking to Tad a lot lately, so this statement probably shouldn't have made my cheeks flush or my stomach tie into a bunch of happy knots. I just shrugged and tried to sound nonchalant as I said, "Well. Knowing too much is kind of an occupational hazard when you live with my dad and Mercy."

"True, but it's not just that. Most people would run the other direction if they knew the truth about who my dad really is. About...what we've had to do." Tad looked away, and I knew he was letting the guilt monster get to him again. Which bothered me a little.

Then again: "Yeah," I said. "I know that feeling."

Tad gave me a searching look. "Yeah, I guess you do."

I realized I was fiddling with my dad's dog tags. I still had Mercy's lamb pendant around my neck, too. "You know," I said conversationally, "my dad once literally ripped someone limb from limb on my behalf. I'm not trying to play the who's-got-a-scarier-dad game or anything, but by comparison, Zee has always seemed downright warm and fuzzy to me."

Tad stared at me for a second, then burst out laughing. "Oh, man. You'd better not let my dad hear you calling him warm and fuzzy."

"It's his own fault," I insisted, feeling weirdly pleased. Everything might be terrible, but at least I could still make Tad laugh. "Zee's never been anything but kind to me. He may have been the Dark Smith of Drontheim once, but that's not who he is anymore."

"Well. That's only mostly true," Tad said, his amusement fading.

"I think it's totally true," I argued. "Zee has been the way he is for so long that most fae have forgotten what he can do. That's only true because he spent a long time choosing not to do the things that made him fearsome in the first place. I have a theory about this, actually."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I think everything changed when he met your mom. And then he had you, and he couldn't go back."

Tad glanced over at the closed bedroom door, then back at me. "You know, I've had similar thoughts. Dad started destroying his old artifacts right around the time he met my mom."

"See? And now he's just a big old soft-hearted pudding," I said, which got another snort of laughter. I glanced over at the bedroom door, too. "You don't think Zee can hear us, do you?"

"Probably not. But even if he could, he wouldn't eavesdrop."

 _That must be nice,_ I thought. Not that my dad didn't respect my privacy; he just couldn't help how much he overheard. Thinking of my dad made my stomach tie into unpleasant knots of worry, though, so I said, "Good. Because I want to ask you something."

Tad raised an eyebrow at me. "Is it something inappropriate?"

"No."

"Dangit."

I rolled my eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you to get your mind out of the gutter?"

"My mind's not in the gutter. It's just going the same place anyone's mind would go if a beautiful girl wanted to make sure you were alone before asking you a question."

I felt suddenly strange and fluttery at the word _beautiful,_ but I was determined not to act like an idiot about it, so I just said, "Oh, really? I didn't know you were into Q-and-A," and wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

Tad grinned. "What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good one-on-one."

"Ooh. Nice and intimate, eh?" I said, in what I hoped was a seductive voice.

To my immense satisfaction, I saw a flush creep up Tad's neck, and his gaze dropped to my lips before he looked away. I would have teased him about this, except the fluttery feeling had suddenly spread to my brain, and I couldn't stop thinking about what it would feel like to kiss him again.

Tad cleared his throat. "So. You had a question?"

"Right," I said, attempting to focus. "It's about your hair."

"My _hair_?"

"Yes. I mean...with your hair, do you, um - do you actually need haircuts?"

Tad let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like a disguised laugh. "Jesse, you _gave_ me a haircut."

"I know," I said defensively. "But I also know that most of the fae wear glamours, so I thought maybe you did, too. And if you can change how you look at will...why wouldn't you be able to control the length of your hair, too?"

"Ah," Tad said. He scratched the back of his head self-consciously. "I guess that's a fair question."

"It's not, like, a super top-secret fae thing, is it?" I said. "Apparently I already know too many of those."

Tad shook his head. "No. The fact that fae wear glamours is pretty common knowledge. And you actually have firsthand experience seeing fae without their glamours on."

"I do?" I said, then realized what he meant. "Oh, right. I do." The fae who'd attacked our house hadn't had their glamours on. If they had, they would have been way less freaky-looking. I grimaced, thinking of the gigantic bug-looking fae we'd had to kill.

"What?" Tad said, seeing my expression.

"Nothing. It's just... _please_ tell me you don't turn into a giant creepy caterpillar-looking thing without your glamour on."

Tad laughed again. "No. I do not turn into a giant freaky caterpillar without my glamour on."

"Thank goodness."

"But, Jesse..." he said, his amusement fading. "I don't exactly look like a normal human, either."

I knew this wasn't something Tad talked about with a lot of people. Or possibly anyone. So probably I should have done something like tell him that I didn't care what he looked like, or that no matter what he became without his glamour on, he was still Tad.

Instead I said, "Do you have fur?"

"What?"

"Without your glamour on. Do you have fur?"

"Um...no. I do not have fur," Tad said, bemused.

"Whew! That's a relief," I said. "We've got enough shedding around the house as it is."

Tad only looked befuddled for a moment before he dissolved into laughter again. Then he grabbed my face and started kissing me. First my forehead, then my temple. Then all the way down my cheek. "God - I - missed - you - Jesse," he said, punctuating each word with a kiss.

 _I missed you too,_ I meant to say. But the last few days of worrying combined with the last few minutes of wondering when I could kiss him again caught up with me, so I just turned my head to meet him, and then the whole world was just the two of us colliding as his mouth slowly opened against mine.

Tad's hands slipped into my hair, cradling the back of my head, and I felt all the worry chase out of me. Kissing might have been the best activity ever invented. It was definitely right up there with winning the lottery, or becoming the sole victor of a pack-wide battle in ISTDPBF.

Before I could get too lost in it, though, Tad pulled away. "I missed you, Jesse," he said again, resting his forehead against mine. "I know it's only been a few days, but..."

"I missed you, too." I was suddenly glad our faces were so close together. I didn't want him seeing the dopey expression I'd just gotten on mine.

But Tad didn't look at my expression; he just tipped my head back and kissed me again - hungrier this time, like he'd been thinking about _this_ the entire time he was away, too.

Which made it really upsetting when he pulled away again.

"You're not gonna give me another speech about how you want to take me on a proper date, are you?" I said, my breathing slightly ragged.

Tad leaned away from me, like he was trying to get a grip on himself. "I _do_ want to take you on a proper date," he said. "It's just that I can think of a lot of other things I'd like to do, too."

"Like...?"

"Things that would definitely make your dad want to tear me limb from limb."

This made me feel oddly flushed all over. But I just said, "Well, I'd hate to see you dismembered. I guess we'd better go on that date, then."

"We will, Jesse," Tad said, giving me a serious look. "I promise. Just as soon as I can figure out a way to -"

"No," I said. "I meant, why don't we go on a date right now?"

"Now? Like, _now_ now?"

"Sure. Why not?" I said. "We've got basically the whole place to ourselves. I bet there's something to eat in the kitchen. Why don't we scrounge up whatever we can and…I don't know…make a night of it?"

Tad just stared at me again. But then a slow smile spread across his face. "Jesse, have I mentioned lately that you're one of a kind?"

* * *

Tad searched the cabinets while I rummaged through the fridge. I pulled out a jar of something that might have passed for blueberry jam, except that it was definitely, definitely glowing. "What _is_ this?" I said, holding it up for Tad's inspection.

Tad took one look at the jar and snatched it out of my hands. "You didn't try to open this, did you?"

"No, of course not. What is it?"

"No idea. Nothing good," Tad said, setting the jar gingerly back in the fridge. He scanned the rest of its contents, then said, "On second thought, why don't you set the table while I look for food?"

"Deal," I said. I knew better than to argue when potentially dangerous magic was involved.

While Tad took over food duty, I assembled plates, napkins, and glasses. At first, there was no sign of silverware. Or plasticware. Not even a pair of rogue chopsticks. Eventually, I found a polished wooden box in one of the lower cabinets that reminded me of the velvet-lined box we kept our fancy silverware in at home. I turned back to Tad and held the box out for inspection. "Do you think this is safe to open?"

Tad took one look at the box and his face lit up. "Aha! That's where it was hiding."

"That's where what was hiding?"

"Metal. I could tell there was something in here, but I couldn't figure out what it was."

"You can tell when metal is nearby? Just like that?" I said, my eyebrows shooting up.

Tad shrugged. "Well, it usually doesn't stick out that much, because in most houses there's all kinds of random metal. But here it's easier to notice."

"Right. Speaking of which. Why would a fae have something metal in here?"

"Well, it's not iron or steel," Tad said, taking the box from me. "Precious metals are another story. This is definitely silver. I'm gonna check and make sure there are no enchantments on it." He muttered something under his breath, frowning in concentration, then declared, "All good," and opened the wooden box. Inside was an array of beautifully crafted silverware that was way too fancy for the plastic placemats we were going to be using.

"Cool," I said, taking the box back. "You know, I've never really seen you work your magic before." Except for that one time in my bedroom. And the javelin-making on Cable Bridge, but I thought it was probably best if I didn't bring that up.

"Hmm," Tad said. "I guess that's true. Well...would you like to?"

I almost lost my grip on the box. "Really?"

I hoped my expression wasn't too pathetic. Because after all, I'd grown up around magic. I was on a first-name basis with our local witch. But it wasn't like my dad ever let me hang around to see Elizaveta work her magic. And the only time I'd ever seen fae magic in action was when they were attacking our house.

And there was definitely a part of me - you know, the Harry Potter-loving part of me - that was as fascinated with the idea of seeing magic in action as any other Muggle.

"Sure," Tad said, grinning at my expression. "How about after dinner, I do a little demo for you?"

"Okay!" I said, and now I _knew_ I looked like a dodo brain, because Tad's grin got even wider.

I decided to turn away and set the table before I made an even bigger fool of myself. Within a few minutes, Tad and I were sitting across from each other with two mismatched place settings and a random assortment of food between us. Tad had managed to scrounge up a jar of olives (gross), a jar of pickle spears (better), a roll of salami, pre-sliced swiss cheese, a bag of honey roasted peanuts, dried dates, and, of all things, a package of Girl Scout cookies.

"How did Girl Scout cookies get here?" I marveled, picking up the box. "And who is going to be pissed at us for eating them?"

Tad shrugged. "Nobody I care about," he said, taking the box from me and ripping it open. "Dig in."

"Dessert before dinner? How scandalous," I said, pulling out a cookie. It was shortbread, which I always think of as the most boring kind of cookie, at least until I bite into it and remember that I actually like it. We munched a couple of cookies in silence before I felt like I ought to say something. "So, Tad...tell me about you."

Tad quirked an eyebrow at me. "Tell you about me?"

"Sure I mean, we're on a date, right? Shouldn't we have...date talk?"

"Date talk? Okay. Well, I'm 6'2", I'm a Virgo Hufflepuff ENFJ-"

"Not that kind of date talk," I said, rolling my eyes. "And what do you mean you're in Hufflepuff?"

"Of course I'm in Hufflepuff. Why wouldn't I be in Hufflepuff?"

"I dunno," I said, cocking my head in thought. "I mean...I always think of you as quite brave, facing off against lava monsters and bridge trolls and things. But you're also quite cunning and sneaky, going off on your secret missions with Zee. And you have the brains to go to an Ivy League school, so..."

"Basically I'm Divergent," Tad said.

I laughed. "That must be it."

"What about you?"

"Me? I'm obviously a Hufflepuff."

"But your Gryffindor hair!" Tad said in mock protest.

"All a clever ruse," I said. "Mercy's the Gryffindor in the family. She's always running headlong into dangerous situations. Dad's the Ravenclaw, constantly strategizing and over-analyzing everything. My actual mom's definitely Slytherin, magically getting everyone to do her bidding all the time. And me..."

"You're a lot like your dad, you know. With your strategic mind."

"Yeah, but I'm also the one still making pancakes when everything around me's going crazy. Sometimes I feel like everything I do is just a put-my-head-down and work hard under the radar sort of thing."

"You know what?" Tad said. "I think that means we're both Divergents."

"That must be it," I agreed. I wrapped a piece of cheese around a chunk of salami and popping it into my mouth. "So...I do have an actual question for you. If you don't mind."

"Go for it," Tad said, opening the jar of pickles.

"When did you first realize you had metal magic?"

"Hmmm." Tad took a bite out of a pickle spear, considering. "I'm not sure there was ever a moment when I realized it. I could always do stuff with metal, even before I could walk. It really freaked my mom out at first. She'd heard stories about the other half-human fae who inherited powers, and how it drove them all mad eventually. But Dad always said he knew I'd be okay. Full-blooded fae can all use their powers from a really young age. But most of the half-fae didn't get their powers until way later, if they got them at all."

"You know, I've always wondered why there weren't more half-fae like you," I said. "It seems like your powers are such a part of you. I can't imagine you without them. How could someone's own magic turn against them?"

Tad's expression turned dark. "Well, that's exactly what the Gray Lords would like to know. Or at least...they're desperate to know why magic stuck with me and no one else."

I felt a pang in my chest. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring all that up."

Tad shook his head, his expression clearing. "It's fine, Jesse. Believe me, I've wondered a lot about it myself. Sometimes I think..."

"What?"

"I don't know. It's probably stupid."

"It's probably not," I said.

"All right. Well...the fae paired up with humans because the Gray Lords commanded it, right? But my dad's never exactly been known for following the Gray Lord's commands. I think with my mom, it was just...different. He actually loved her. I don't think that was true for most of the other fae who married humans. Maybe not any of them. I don't know if that's the sort of thing that would actually make a difference, but..."

"I think that makes sense," I said quietly. "After all, this isn't strictly science we're dealing with. It's also, you know, _magic._ I can see how your dad really loving your mom could have made a difference."

"Maybe," Tad said, with a shrug, but I thought he looked a little heartened by this.

"I wish I'd gotten a chance to meet your mom," I said quietly. "I think there must be a lot of her in you."

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

"Well, you didn't inherit Zee's grouchiness, for one thing."

Tad laughed. "I guess not. My mom was a good balance for my dad in that way. In a lot of ways."

I didn't really know how to navigate the topic of a dead parent, and I definitely didn't want to keeping bringing up anything would depress him, so I wasn't really sure how to steer the conversation from here.

Luckily, Tad went on. "She would've liked you."

"She would?" I said. I felt inordinately pleased.

"Yeah. She would've liked all of you. She might've disapproved of Mercy, though."

"Mercy?" My eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Why?"

"Well, Mercy tends to attract trouble. I can't imagine my mom would have approved of, say, me going into battle against a lava monster."

"Or a bridge troll," I said. "Although I'm pretty sure the lava monster was _my_ mom's fault. And the bridge troll was the fae's fault."

"Yeah, but Mercy's the one who ended up in the middle of both of those messes. As usual."

"Fair point. I guess being the daughter of Coyote will do that to you. It's like she inherited trouble the way you inherited metal magic," I mused. "Don't tell her I said that."

"Never," Tad agreed. "So...tell me about _you,_ Jesse. When did you know your dad was a werewolf?"

"Oh, man," I said. "I'm not sure I have a specific memory for this, either. But I can tell you that for a while I thought he was our pet."

"Your _pet_?"

"Yep. One day, when I was, oh, three or four, Auriele was babysitting while my mom went out for errands. My dad had gone out with some of the pack, just...running around in wolf form, I guess, and when he got back he could tell that my mom was gone, but he didn't realize I was still there. Or something? Anyway, the gist of it is that he came back to the house as a wolf, and the second I spotted him I just ran to him and started petting him. And then I ended up climbing on his back and he ran around for a while. Which I apparently I loved so much that he started doing it whenever my mom wasn't around.

"It didn't take long for me to bust us, though. Every time I was outside, I started pointing to the woods and asking where doggie was. Mom figured it out pretty quick, and she was _not_ happy. But she and my dad must have worked something out, because I remember seeing him in wolf form, like, all the time as a kid. And I guess somehow I put two and two together in my little kid brain, because one day when my dad showed up in wolf form, my mom says I ran to him and said, 'Daddy!' and that was that."

"That is ridiculously adorable," Tad said.

I threw a piece of salami at him. "And if you ever tell my dad I told you that story, he will definitely tear you limb from limb."

"Duly noted," Tad said, popping the salami into his mouth.

"So," I said, deciding a change of subject was in order. "You never actually answered my question."

"Which question?"

"About your hair."

Tad got a devilish look on his face. "Oh, right. That question. I guess I got a little distracted."

"I guess you did," I said coolly, even though my heart had taken up the good old _thwomp-thwomp-thwomp-_ ing in my chest again. "So?"

"So...I do need haircuts," Tad admitted. "Although technically I could also give myself a haircut. If I wanted." He shut his eyes, and I watched as his hair grew out past his hears, and then shrank back up again just as quickly.

Even though I'd suspected this was true, I couldn't keep myself from gasping as I watched. "So why did you let me - I mean, why didn't you stop me from -?"

"Well, you seemed so determined," Tad said. "I didn't want to disappoint you."

He was clearly trying and failing to keep a straight face. I gave him a Look.

"Also," he said, "maybe I wasn't opposed to spending a little more time with you."

He held my gaze long enough that my cheeks grew warm again.

"Well," I said, clearing my throat. I surveyed our mostly-consumed hodge-podge of food. Mostly consumed by Tad, I should point out. "That was tasty. Thanks for pulling all the food together."

"Thanks for suggesting we steal somebody's food to go on a date."

"We did not steal...okay, I guess we did totally steal all this food. Do you think we should leave money or something?"

Tad shrugged. "I'll tell Uncle Mike to put it on my tab."

* * *

After we finished cleaning up, we settled back on the couch in front of the fireplace. The wooden box sat open on the coffee table, its contents gleaming in the firelight.

"Are you ready for this?"

"If you are," I said.

"Why don't you put on some music?" Tad said.

"Oookay." I grabbed my phone. "What kind of music?"

"The musical kind."

"Helpful," I said, rolling my eyes. For some reason, a scene from the movie _Hocus Pocus_ popped into my head - the one where the witches show up at a Halloween party and start enchanting a room full of people. I pulled up the song _I Put A Spell On You_ and turned it on.

Tad laughed, which of course had been my goal. "All right. Here we go."

He took a deep breath, then started moving his hands. The fancy silverware began to move, too.

Nina Simone sang, _"I put a spell on you, because you're mine..."_ and the silverware lifted out of the box, spiraling up toward the ceiling, where it formed into the shape of a chandelier.

"Whoa," I said. The look on my face must have been something else, because Tad looked pretty pleased with himself.

"What else do you want to see?" he said.

"Do a school of fish! No - a giraffe! Ooh - the Statue of Liberty!"

Tad did all three, then made the silverware fly all around the room. In the middle of all the zooming, he looked over at me. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course, Aladdin."

"What?"

"It's what he says to Jasmine right before they - never mind. Yes, I trust you."

"Okay. Stand over there. Make sure there's some space around you."

I hopped off the couch and went to stand in the middle of the room. Tad stood up, too, moving his hands around and around in circles. Next thing I knew, I had a cone of silverware flying around me. It was kind of like standing in the middle of a tornado, only way less scary and way more beautiful.

Tad walked over to me, parting the silverware for a moment so he could stand right in front of me, and then he closed the tornado around us again. The silverware caught glints of the firelight as it moved; I could see the bright reflections moving across Tad's skin as the silverware swirled round and round.

"It's like being inside a disco ball," I murmured. "But, like, a really stabby one."

Tad gave a quiet laugh. One of his hands kept moving in a slow circle, keeping the silverware swirling around us. His other hand went to my cheek, and I tilted my face up toward his.

" _I put a spell on you...I put a spell on you..."_

The words of the song and the flow of Tad's magic went around and around in my head as he kissed me. I gripped Tad's shirt tightly with both hands and lost myself in it completely.

By the time we came up for air, Tad's arms were tight around me, and all the silverware had scattered across the floor. I leaned into him, nestling my face against his chest and feeling the rapid _thump-thump-thump_ of his heart, and knew that I was a complete and total goner.


	9. Together

A/N: SORRY it's taken me so long to post! Life's been crazy and I've got a lot of other (non fanfic) writing projects in the works. I'll try to be better in future. But...might be another few weeks before next update. Thanks to anyone who's sticking around and hasn't given up on me!

UPDATE 6/4/18 - Tweaked the last scene in the chapter a bit. I didn't bother editing it before posting and it was starting to bother me.

* * *

Chapter Nine

Later, after I'd had a chance to piece everything together, I figured out that right around the time Tad and I were kissing in the middle of a giant silverware tornado, my dad, Mercy, and Aiden were running for their lives from an invisible fae-monster.

Maybe it was weird that I'd been making out while my loved ones were in mortal peril. But I think it was completely reasonable to want a distraction under those circumstances. And Tad...well, Tad wasn't just a distraction.

As I stood there with my face buried in his chest - for the second time that night - I noticed the apartment felt unusually silent. It wasn't just that the music had stopped.

I realized that Zee's snoring had ceased about two seconds before the bedroom door flew open. Tad and I jerked apart.

"Keeping busy, _lieblings_?" Zee said, surveying the silverware scattered all over the floor.

"Um - we were just - " I attempted, my cheeks suddenly flaming.

"I was just practicing," Tad said. With a casual wave of his arm, he sent all the silverware flying back into the box. The pieces all landed neatly in their designated slots.

I probably should have been impressed, but mostly I felt annoyed that Tad was capable of casting magic when I wasn't even capable of stringing a whole sentence together.

"Show-off," I muttered. Tad just grinned.

"I hope you saved me something to eat," Zee said, heading toward the kitchen.

I felt awkward standing there in the middle of the room, so I followed Zee to the kitchen and got myself a glass of water, just for something to do. I leaned against the counter while Zee rummaged through the fridge, and tried to think of something to say.

Tad followed, leaning against the counter next to me. I almost wished he'd chosen to stand somewhere else. Not because I didn't want him next to me, but because having him so close made it difficult for me to think about anything other than the distance between us. And how badly I wanted to close the gap.

"Did you, um, have a good nap?" I asked Zee.

Zee gave a noncommittal grunt. "No annoying dreams from Underhill. That's good enough for me."

Right. Because Underhill had been sending dreams to all the fae, trying to get them to capture Aiden. Apparently now that Underhill had Aiden back, the dreams had ceased. I figured this was a good thing for the fae in general, but I didn't know what it would mean for Aiden.

"Zee...you've been to Underhill, right?" I said slowly. "I mean, you lived there once, didn't you?"

I felt Tad stiffen next to me, and wondered if I'd crossed a line.

But Zee just nodded. " _Ja._ Once upon a time."

"What if...I mean, do you think..." I began.

"Spit it out, _liebling_."

"Do you think Underhill will actually let them go?" I blurted out. "I know Mercy has the walking stick to guide them out. But Underhill wants Aiden. So even if they do make their way to an exit, Underhill could still...I don't know...try to keep them there, couldn't she?"

I could feel Tad's gaze on me, but I kept my focus on Zee.

"She could," Zee agreed. "I think she will try to keep them all three of them, if she can. But, Jesse," he said, looking me straight in the eye, "there is no one I would trust to get back out of Underhill more than Mercy."

I bit my lip and nodded. Zee had a point there. Mercy might have a talent for getting into trouble, but she had an equally strong knack for getting out of it again.

Zee finished assembling his plate of food and carried it over to the kitchen table. Tad reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. Even that contact sent a strange flush running up my arm.

I didn't know how to navigate any of this with Zee in the room. Actually, I wasn't sure I knew how to navigate this _without_ Zee in the room. But at least if Zee hadn't been in the room, I could've buried my face in Tad's chest again to hide my confusion.

As it was, I decided to join Zee at the table. He was digging into some strange purple substance that Tad had definitely not pulled out of the fridge for us to enjoy.

"I still can't believe Aiden volunteered to go back," I said. Nothing I'd learned about Underhill made it sound like a place I'd want to revisit. Or visit, period. "Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, though," I went on. "After all, he saved my life during the attack on the house. Now he's saving everybody from a war with the fae, and they don't even know it." I hesitated, because I couldn't believe I was about to say this next bit. But it would've been chicken of me not to, so I blurted out, "I'm glad you brought him to us. I'm glad the pack's protecting him."

Zee just nodded. But Tad gave me a look of mingled relief and gratitude that somehow made my cheeks flush. "I'm glad, Jesse," he said quietly.

"Yeah. Well," I said, clearing my throat. "He still needs a primer on how to treat women if he's going to rejoin modern society."

"Oh, trust me. We're working on that."

"Good."

"You know...you should tell him all this yourself," Tad said. "It would mean a lot to him to hear it coming from you."

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. "It would?"

Tad frowned. "Of course. Aiden knows he needs to earn your trust, especially after the way things started with you two. And...well...he's been trying."

I had to admit there'd been a change in Aiden ever since the night of the fae attack. Although I'd mostly been attributing that to me no longer giving him the cold shoulder. "I guess I can see that," I admitted.

Something else occurred to me then, too.

If it weren't for Aiden, Tad and Zee would never have escaped from the Gray Lords. Which meant Tad and Aiden wouldn't have shown up in time to help the pack defeat the bridge troll. And then Mercy wouldn't have made her protection proclamation on the bridge. Which meant Zee, Tad, and Aiden would never have to come live with us.

Basically, everything that happened over the couple weeks was made possible by Kid Groper. Including whatever was going on with me and Tad.

I locked eyes with Tad across the table and couldn't help wondering: how had I gone from hating Aiden to owing him everything?

* * *

"Wait, wait, wait. So that was it?" Izzy said. "You didn't get to finish your date?"

"Nnnnope," I said, popping a French fry in my mouth. It was Friday, and Izzy and I were rehashing the last two days over lunch. "I mean, what were we gonna do? Tell Zee he needed to take another nap so we could get back to snogging?"

Izzy gave a snort of amusement. "Fair enough. So what'd you do for the rest of the night?"

"Just...waited." In agony. Sitting next to Tad, wondering if it would be weird to reach out and take his hand in front of Zee. (I didn't.)

Luckily, Zee distracted us by teaching us a long, complicated game of cards that somehow took five minutes to explain but freaking forever to play. We were still in the middle of a game when Uncle Mike burst in to inform us that my dad, Mercy, and Aiden had made it back from Underhill. Miraculously alive, and all in one piece.

"Longest. Freaking. Night. Of my _life,"_ I declared, and Izzy gave a little hum of sympathy.

"Welp, it's official," she said. "You are having the absolute most ridiculous month of anybody I've ever met. Including Mercy."

"Um, I'm pretty sure Mercy and I are having the same month."

"Nope," Izzy said. "Mercy may have gone on a wacky near-death adventure through Underhill, but you had to sit there and _wait_ for her to return from a wacky near-death adventure. That is way more nerve-wracking."

"Well, I can't argue that."

"Also, you managed to go on a _date_ while you were waiting. Who does that? Only you. Only you would do that."

I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but I couldn't keep a smile from quirking my lips. "Well, I had to do _something_ to keep myself from going crazy."

"See? Way more ridiculous."

"If you say so," I said, but I was full-on grinning now. "Honestly, I'm just glad it's all over."

"Me, too," Izzy agreed. "Now we can move on to REALLY the important stuff. When are you and Tad going out again?"

"Um," I said. I strategically took a bite of my chicken sandwich so I wouldn't have to say any more.

"Whaaaat?" Izzy said, reading between the lines. "You mean he hasn't asked you out yet?"

"Iff oh-nee been a day," I said, around my bite of chicken sandwich.

"You live in the same house!" Izzy protested. "It's not like he has the excuse of not seeing you."

"Actually...I haven't seen him since Wednesday night," I admitted.

This was due to all of us staying up half the night on Wednesday listening to my dad, Mercy, and Aiden recount their daring adventures. At approximately three am, I'd made my dad promise to call in sick for me at school, and then I'd crashed. Hard.

When I'd finally woken up mid-afternoon on Thursday, I'd spent a long time just lying in bed, thinking over the past few weeks. I couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that we didn't have to worry about the fae anymore. Or that I didn't have to feel guilty thinking about Tad when there were other, way more life-and-death issues on the table.

And then, of course, as soon as I thought of Tad, all I wanted to do was lie there and relive our date. There were a lot of highlights: the two of us poking around the kitchen and assembling supplies for dinner; Tad demonstrating his powers; the way he'd looked at me as he'd parted the silverware tornado, so he could come close and kiss me. I thought about _that_ until I felt like I was melting into a silly little girl-puddle on my bed.

I stayed burrowed under the covers until I was sure I wouldn't make an idiot out of myself when I ran into Tad downstairs.

Which turned out to be a moot point, because when I got up, Tad wasn't even there. He was gone for most of the day, and he hadn't come back until after dinner. At which point I'd been inconveniently sequestered in my room, doing all the homework that had accumulated over the last two days.

"Boooo," Izzy said. "Didn't he at least text you? Or knock on your door and say hi?"

"I don't think he's much of a text-er," I said, even though I wasn't sure that this was true. "Plus, I think my dad put the fear in him about visiting me in my room."

"Excuses, excuses," Izzy said grumpily. "He'd better get his butt in gear. You've had more than enough suspense lately. You don't need it in the romance department, too."

The bell rang, and we gathered up our stuff. As I stood, I realized the little alert light on my phone was flashing. I had a text. From Tad!

"Oho!" Izzy said, seeing my expression. "Speak of the devil?"

I held out the phone so she could see. _U, me, walk in the woods later?_

"Yasssss!" Izzy said. "Negative points for waiting so long. But positive points for good timing."

I tried to ignore the soaring sensation in my chest as I sent back a smiley emoji, followed by _C u later._

* * *

After that, the school day went, like, a million times faster.

You'd think it would have been the opposite. That I'd be so impatient to see Tad that time felt like it was moving in slow motion. But somehow just knowing I was going to see Tad later put me in such a good mood I didn't mind waiting. In fact, I didn't mind much of anything at all.

Quiz in English class? No problem. Lab in Physics? Crushed it. Conversation practice in Spanish? _iEstoy la reina de los conversaciones!_

When school let out, I practically skipped to my locker, bouncing on the balls of my feet as I shoved my books into my backpack, then chatted gleefully with Izzy the whole way home. She was allowed to give me rides, now that fae were no longer actively trying to kidnap and/or murder anyone in my household.

When we pulled to a stop in front of my house, Izzy pointed a finger at me and said, "Call me later. Tell me everything."

"Thanks for the ride, Iz."

"I mean it!" Izzy called after me as I shut the door. I waved good-bye, then turned and forced myself to walk into the house like a normal person. As opposed to running inside and yelling, "Tad, I'm hoooome!" like a total moron.

It was probably a good thing I'd restrained myself, since I passed Warren, Darryl, and Ben on my way up to my room. I definitely did _not_ need to announce to the pack that something was going on between me and Tad. I mean, there was a 99.9% chance the entire pack already knew, because stupid werewolf senses, but still. I didn't need to out myself before the whole thing became official.

Assuming it was going to become official. I mean, it probably was. But I didn't want to jinx it or anything.

When I got to my room, I dumped my backpack by my desk and spent a few minutes fussing over my appearance before bounding back downstairs to find Tad. I expected him to be hanging out in the basement with Aiden.

Instead, I nearly ran into him on the first-floor landing.

"Hey!" I said, grabbing the banister to pull myself to a halt. "I was just coming to find you."

"Same," Tad said.

Grinning. Like. Idiots.

Tad's gaze roamed over me like he hadn't seen me for days. Well, I guess he hadn't.

A part of me wanted to fling myself at him, but that seemed dangerous considering we were currently on the stairs. So I kept my grip on the banister and said, "Walk?"

"Yep," he agreed, and gestured for me to go down the stairs ahead of him.

I grabbed my coat and bundled up as we stepped out into the cool, bright afternoon. The backyard smelled like spring rain and new turf. The lawn had been so chewed up by the fae attack we'd bought a bunch of those rolls of pre-grown grass for landscaping purposes. We'd also gotten rid of the all boulders, except the one we used for star-gazing.

Even the back wall of the house was looking pretty good. You almost couldn't tell how much of the siding had recently been replaced. Except the windows were so brand-spankin'-new some of them still had stickers in the panes.

"Almost looks back to normal," Tad observed.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Or as close to normal as anything ever gets around here." I tipped my head back, looking up at the puffy white clouds rolling across the afternoon sky and let out a deep breath. "I'm so glad it's over. A part of me can't believe it. I keep half-expecting something else to come up."

"Like what?"

"I don't know." I shrugged. "Like...maybe there's something else the Gray Lords want. Or Underhill might decide Aiden visiting every once in a while isn't enough, or...I don't know. I just feel like I won't really be able to rest easy until the treaty is all signed and official. _"_

"I know what you mean," Tad said. "But I think we've got this one, Jesse. The treaty'll come through."

"Yeah," I said, as we stepped onto the path and entered the woods. "I just wish-" I cut myself off, wondering if it was stupid to say out loud.

"What?" Tad said.

I hesitated, but something about entering the woods made it feel as though we were completely alone, even though we weren't really that far from the house. So I let the words tumble out. "I just wish I _knew_. You know? Like...is this it? Is this the last time our lives are gonna be turned completely upside down by something crazy and supernatural? And I know the answer is _no._ I know there's going to be something else down the road. Especially now that Mercy made the whole public vow of protection and everything...

"Which is a good thing," I went on. "Obviously I want us to help people, if we can. But the more people who come to us, the more dangerous it's gonna be. And I feel like you only get so much luck. Sooner or later, our luck's gonna run out. The pack will come up against something they can't beat, and - "

"Whoa. Hey. Jesse." Tad stopped, turning to face me, and put his hands on my shoulders. The weight of them was reassuring and _thwomp-_ inducing, all at once.

"Sorry," I said reflexively. "I just..."

"I know," Tad said, and that spark of understanding passed between us again. He really _did_ know. Maybe even more than I did. I'd worried a lot lately about losing my parents - but Tad had already lost one of his. He gave my shoulders a gently squeeze. "But it's not just luck you guys have, Jesse. Whatever happens, you won't have to face it alone. There are people who will fight for the pack. And I don't just mean me and dad."

I nodded. "I know. It's just...this last time was really hard. First the bridge, then the attack on the house, then the whole excursion to Underhill..." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling suddenly shaky. "Everything hit so close to home this time. Literally. And maybe that means if we can get through this, we can get through anything. But also, maybe next time...someone won't show up in the nick of time. You know?"

Tad's had a pained look on his face. "Come here," he said. He pulled me close and dropped a kiss on top of my head before wrapping his arms around me. "Jesse, nothing's gonna happen to you if I can help it," he murmured, rubbing one hand gently up and down my back.

One second I was jumbled with emotion, and the next second I was wrapped up in Tad - who was warm, sturdy, and smelling ridiculously good in a way that was super distracting - and suddenly everything that had felt upsetting and potentially full of doom didn't seem all that dire anymore.

I burrowed into him, and he tucked my head under his chin. "If it were up to me, you'd never have to go through this again," he said. "I'd track down anyone who even thought of messing with you and kick the crap out of them."

"Actually...I'm pretty sure you _could_ do that," I said, turning my head so my voice wasn't all muffled against his chest. "Case in point: lava monster."

I felt Tad's laugh vibrate through his chest. "That's not exactly what I meant, but I'll take it." He gave me a squeeze and let me go.

"I'm not going to keep being a total downer every time we hang out," I said, looking up at him. "I promise."

Tad just shook his head. "In no universe are you a total downer, Jesse."

"Hmm. Not even a reverse universe, where everything's the opposite of this one?"

"Well, if we were in a reverse universe, then I'd be a total downer with you," he pointed out.

"Fair enough," I said.

We turned and kept walking, deeper into the woods. Before long, we came across the fallen log blocking the path. Tad jumped up and offered his hand. This time I took it, pulling myself up next to him, and when we both jumped down the other side, Tad didn't let go.

Instead, he laced his fingers through mine, and because I'm apparently a walking ball of hormones whenever I'm around Tad, it felt like there were miniature fireworks going off under my skin.

I cleared my throat. "So, uh...what's new with you? You, since two days ago."

"Ah," Tad said. "Well...I've been job hunting."

 _"Job_ hunting?" I echoed. Of all the things I expected him to say, that really wasn't one of them.

"Yeah. See, there's this girl who's pretty great, and I've been promising to take her on a date. A _real_ date. But funds are a little short, so...job hunting."

"I see," I said, attempting to sound like this wasn't making the internal fireworks show light up literally everywhere inside of me. "Any luck?"

"Oh, yes. Lots of opportunities for enterprising young people out there, if you know where to look. I got a gig right away."

"Just like that?" I said dubiously. "Don't tell me you joined the faerie mafia or something."

"Oh, no. Much worse. Hot dogs."

" _Hot dogs_?"

"Yep. You're looking at a bona fide hot dog salesman. And by salesman, I mean I agreed to stand on a street corner wearing a hot dog suit and waving a sign."

"You. Did. Not."

"Ohhh, but I did. Easily the grossest money I ever made. That suit must have been filled with the sweat of a thousand martyrs, their dignity sacrificed on the altar of unforgiving bratwurst."

"That's disgusting," I said, but I was laughing. "Should I be touching you right now?"

"Don't worry. I showered at least a thousand times to make up for it. But the memory will haunt me forever."

"Poor Tad," I said. "That sounds like a fate worthy of ISTDBPF."

"Don't even think it!" Tad said with mock horror. "You'll give the game developers _ideas."_

I laughed again. "Well, I'm honored. Does this mean we get to go on a real date now?"

Tad cleared his throat suddenly. "Well, that depends," he said.

"On what?"

"On how you react."

"To...the sight of you in a hot dog costume?" I said slowly.

"Nope. Let's, um...let's sit." He dragged me off the path, to a large, mossy tree stump. We sat, our hands still intertwined.

"Tad, what's going on? You're kinda freaking me out."

"Nope. No need to freak out. I, uh - I just wanted to tell you, before you found out from somebody else. I mean, in _case_ you found out from somebody else. Which you shouldn't. Nobody should know. But you know the pack, they're terrible at keeping secrets, and-"

I gave his hand a hard squeeze. "Tad, seriously, just spit it out."

"I asked your dad."

"You asked my dad?" I echoed, totally bemused. "Asked him what?"

Just as my brain was starting to piece together what sort of thing a guy might ask my dad for in regards to me, Tad said, "I asked him if I could take you out on a date."

I blinked. I opened my mouth to say something. Closed it again. For as hyped up as my brain had been before, now it felt like it had come to a dead stop.

"I know I didn't need to," Tad said, looking more nervous than I'd ever seen him. "And-I didn't actually _mean_ to. I just thought it would be a good idea to talk to him. Because, you know, there's something going on between us, and -"

"What did you tell him about us?" I interrupted, feeling equal parts curious and annoyed.

"Nothing! That is...nothing specific about what's gone one." He scratched the back of his head nervously. "I just...after the conversation you had with Mercy, I thought it would be a good idea to come clean about my intentions."

"Your intentions?" I said, my eyebrows raising. "And what exactly are those?"

"To take you on a date!" Tad burst out, a flush of red creeping up his neck. "Your dad already knows something's going on with us. I just figured he'd appreciate it if I came to him and told him straight-out, you know?"

I had some very strong opinions about that logic, but I decided to keep them to myself. For now. "So what happened?" I said coolly.

"Mercy was there!" Tad said, agitated. "And I, like an idiot, thought it would be no big deal if she was there while I told him. I thought your dad was going to be the hardass! I mean, sure, he looked me in the eye and told me if anything happened to you he would gladly rip me limb from limb without a second thought. But that was no big deal, I was expecting that - "

"What did you say back?" I said curiously.

"Oh. Well." Tad cleared his throat, looking anywhere but at me. "That was pretty easy. I told him if I ever let anything happen to you...I'd let him."

"Oh," I said, my cheeks suddenly burning.

"That would always have been the case, Jesse," Tad said, running his thumb over the back of my hand. "Even if we weren't..."

"Even if we weren't what?"

Tad cleared his throat again. "The point is that your dad said he appreciated me telling him. But Mercy said you were totally going to kill me when you found out."

"Well, she wasn't _completely_ wrong," I said, squeezing Tad's hand in annoyance.

"I was just trying to do the right thing!" Tad burst out. He ran his free hand through his hair in agitation. "I thought I would just tell your dad straight what was going on and that would be it. But Mercy stopped me before I could leave, and she - she _interrogated_ me." Tad looked even more harrowed than he had when he'd been describing the hot dog costume. "I felt like I was being interviewed for one of those stupid reality dating shows. Except by someone who knows me really well and was clearly just doing it to troll me. Like a jerk," he grumbled. "And I might not have minded, except your dad was sitting there the whole time, staring me down like if I said one wrong thing he'd tear me limb from limb right then and there."

"Poor Tad," I said again. It was really impossible to stay mad at him when he was in this state. All my annoyance had evaporated, and had been replaced by amusement that was getting harder and harder to tamp down.

"And the worst part was that the longer Mercy went on, the more your dad looked like he was trying not to laugh!" Tad glanced over at me and narrowed his eyes at me. "Kind of like the way _you_ look right now."

"Who, me?" I said, doing my best impression of innocence.

"It's not funny. It was extremely traumatic!"

"Poor baby," I said, without much sympathy.

Tad had only been halfway joking. "Between Mercy and the hot dog suit, these last two days have been a doozy. I was kind of glad you were at school the whole day. I needed time to recover."

"Just imagine: if only you'd thought to ask me first, we could've had that conversation with my dad together."

"I'll be honest. I actually didn't think of that."

"Clearly," I said dryly, but I leaned over and rested my head on his shoulder to let him know I wasn't really mad. With what sounded like a sigh of relief, Tad slipped his arm around my shoulders, and I scooted closer, until I was snug in the curve of his arm.

"You know...now that you mention it, I kind of like the sound of that."

"What?"

Tad hesitated. "On second thought, maybe I shouldn't say it. It's pretty cheesy."

"I like cheese. Gouda, parmesan, cheddar...you name it."

Tad gave a quiet snort of amusement. "All right. Well, I was gonna _say...together._ I like the sound of that."

The world's goofiest smile burst onto my face before I could stop it. But Tad couldn't really see my face right now, so I didn't feel too embarrassed about it. "You're right, that is some serious cheese. But, like, the best kind of cheese."

"Grilled cheese?" Tad suggested.

"Yessss! With bacon."

"Bacon? Pssh. Do not sully my grilled cheese with your meat fat."

"Meat fat? Excuse you, bacon is delicious. It's the candy of meats!"

"Yes, and like all candy, it should be eaten on its own."

"Heathen," I told him.

"Hipster."

I gasped. "How dare thee! I am nothing if not bougie!"

" _Thee_?" Tad said, laughing.

I shrugged. "It was the bougie-est thing I could think of."

I could feel Tad's laughter rumbling through his chest again. It was a truly excellent sensation.

We sat there in silence for a while, in our own little world in the middle of the forest. Eventually I said, "You know, for the record...I like the sound of it too."

Tad squeezed my shoulders, pressing a kiss to my temple. There was something so sweet about those little gestures. Almost sweeter than when we actually kissed.

We were silent for a few more minutes, and then I said, "So, Tad?"

"Hm?"

"Are you ever gonna ask me on that date?"


	10. Let's Be In Like Together

A/N: Minor spoilers for Silence Fallen begin in this chapter. Happy reading!

Chapter Ten

"Wellllcome to the freaky zooone," I sang under my breath.

"Yup." Izzy agreed, taking a sip of her mocha. "Freakytown, U.S.A.."

Izzy and I were seated by the front window of the Bean Counter, our favorite local coffee joint, and blatantly people-watching. Or, more accurately, we were fae-spotting.

It had been three weeks since the fae had signed the treaty - which, among other things, had made the Tri-Cities a neutral zone for dealing with the fae. One of the unexpected results of this was that the fae had begun walking around without their glamours on.

Now, anywhere you went, you might encounter an un-glamoured fae who was made entirely of leaves. Or who resembled a giant grasshopper. Or who, instead of walking, simply hovered several feet off the ground at all times.

"Hey now," said the barista, as he delivered my iced chai. "Who are you calling freaky?"

"No one in particular," I said. "Although I did see a fae with arms that looked like they were made of bubbles this morning. That was pretty freaky."

"Don't be prejudiced," he said, and dropped a kiss on my forehead. Which wasn't as inappropriate as it sounds, considering the barista was also Tad.

"It's not prejudice," I said. "It's a subjective assessment of seeing someone with tentacles for arms."

"I thought you said they were made of bubbles."

"They were. They were like...weird bubble tentacle thingies."

Tad arched an eyebrow at me. "You know, to the tentacle-armed, maybe you're the one who looks freaky.

"Hmm." I held out my arms and made a show of examining them, wiggling my fingers. "That's fair," I conceded. "If I was used to having bubbly suction cups all over my appendages, I'd probably be freaked out by bones and flesh, too."

Izzy gave a snort of laughter, but Tad just shook his head at me and dropped another kiss on my head before heading back behind the counter. I watched him go, staring unabashedly as he started speeding through the pile of drink tickets that had somehow accumulated in the minute it had taken him to deliver my chai.

Maybe I was a dope, but I loved watching him work: his quick, sure movements, the steady rhythm he fell into as he worked, the way he still managed to smile and charm everyone as he handed out their drinks, no matter how backed up the Bean Counter got.

Also, every time I looked at him now, I had a tendency to get distracted, thinking about the way those hands felt when they were on my waist. The way his hair felt between my fingers. The way his smile looked when it was lit up just for me.

"Earth to Jesse," Izzy said.

"Shh," I said. "I'm fae-watching." I turned back in time to see Izzy roll her eyes.

She ate some of the whipped cream off her mocha with a spoon. "So what's the countdown?" she said.

I sighed and jabbed my straw at the ice cubes in my drink. "Sixteen and a half." Days, that is.

Just a little less than three weeks left before Tad packed up and moved across the country. Again. Now that the dust had settled between him, Zee, and the Gray Lords, Tad had a life to get back to. Classes. Friends. An Ivy League scholarship.

Thousands and thousands of miles away from me.

Not that I could blame him, of course. It would've been crazy for him to stick around here making lattes when Harvard had agreed to re-admit him for spring quarter. But it was impossible not to feel a little bummed. Especially considering things were going really well between us. Like...even more awesome than expected. Next-level awesome.

Maybe I should back up, because it's all kind of important.

* * *

"I have nothing to wear. How do I have nothing to wear?!" I wailed into the phone.

"Oh, dear," Izzy said. "I knew I should have come over in person."

"Tad's going to be here in fifteen minutes. Haaalp!"

"O-m-g. Calm down, woman. Look, I am all about helping you pick out the world's most perfect date outfit, but may I remind you that this is Tad? He's totally into you. You've already made out with him, like, ten times."

"Six times," I mumbled. Not that I was keeping track or anything.

"Whatever. My point is, Tad would be into you even if you showed up wearing a potato sack. In fact, you can probably go in whatever you're wearing right now."

"Right now I'm wearing my bathrobe."

"Oh. Well...it's not the most orthodox first-date outfit, but somehow I don't think Tad will mind."

"Izzy!"

My best friend's gleeful laughter came cackling over the phone.

"And now I only have twelve minutes," I fumed. "You're no help at all. I'm hanging up."

"Wait! No, no. I'm sorry. I'll focus. Let's think through this logically. Where are you guys going?"

"Dinner and a movie."

"Okay. So you'll be sitting in the dark half the time. Definitely something comfy-ish, then. Where are you going to eat? Someplace fancy?"

"Probably not."

"Great. Put on some jeans."

I stared at the pairs of jeans strewn all over my floor. "What kind of jeans?"

"JEANS," Izzy said. "COMFY ONES."

Sometimes I loved Izzy, and sometimes she was very bossy. And sometimes I loved her because she was very bossy. "Okay," I said. I rifled through the reject pile and put on some jeans.

"Awesome. Now put on that black sleeveless top with the V-neck and bring your black sweater so you don't freeze in the movie theater."

"The black top?" I said dubiously. I knew exactly which top she was talking about. I'd already put it on and rejected it three times.

"YES," Izzy said. "It's baller. Wear it with the gold dangly earrings and own it. LIKE A BOSS."

I dug through the pile of clothes that had accumulated on my desk chair and pulled out the black top. It had a nice gather under the bust and managed to look kind of dressy without being overly fancy. I slipped it on and it somehow looked better than all the previous times I'd tried it on. "You're right. This is a great top."

"Duh," Izzy said. "Now do something with your hair and explain to me why you are freaking out so much."

"Augh. I don't _know,_ " I groaned, even though I did. I put my phone on speaker and set it on my dresser while I ran a brush through my hair. Speakerphone was usually a mistake in my house. But I had my whole noise-canceling fan system going at full force, so hopefully if I kept my own voice down nobody would overhear much. "I just kept trying on outfits and everything felt wrong."

"Wrong?" Izzy echoed. "Wrong how?"

"I don't know," I said again, straightening out my part. "It's just that Tad's known me forever. He's seen me a zillion different ways. But tonight is different. I wanna look different. You know...date-worthy."

"Well, not to be totally obvious or anything, but Tad already thinks you're date-worthy. That is why he asked you on a date."

"I know. But...you get what I'm saying, right?"

Izzy sighed. "I do. But I'm telling you: Tad won't care what you're wearing. I was serious about the potato sack thing. I've seen the way he looks at you."

I tried to ignore the sudden familiar _thwomp-thwomp_ in my chest. "How does he look at me?"

"Oh, you know. All shiny-eyed. Like he wants to get in your pants and build a temple in your honor all at the same time."

I let out a snort of laughter. "Izzy!"

"What? It's true. It's nauseating and adorable all at the same time."

"I think you are exaggerating," I said, as I leaned toward the mirror to inspect my make-up.

"Pfffbt. I think that you are too busy having your own goo-goo eyes to notice."

"I do not have goo-goo eyes," I grumbled, although I was pretty sure that even over the phone Izzy could tell I was blushing. Which was making it really hard to determine whether or not I needed more blush.

"Oh, really? That's what you're going with, miss I-have-nothing-to-wear?"

"Oh, shut it," I said, and touched up my mascara to the sound of Izzy snickering.

"Well, you have like two minutes left. Are you done freaking out yet?"

"Mostly."

"Good. You're gonna do great. Call me later and tell me everything."

"Thanks, Iz."

"Anytime."

We hung up, and I put the finishing touches on my makeup, attempting to take Izzy's advice and just chill out. But even though I knew my outfit looked fine and that the date would be great because I was going with Tad, the truth was...it wasn't just about wanting to look different tonight. It wasn't just about going on a date.

The reason I'd rejected a bazillion outfits and started freaking out was because I already _felt_ different. So much had happened these past few weeks. Bridge trolls, Kid Groper, Fae attacks. Semi-suicidal missions to Underhill that I wasn't allowed to participate in; sudden, unexpected popularity at school; falling in like with Tad.

And with the fae signing the treaty and the pack somehow becoming the supernatural police force of the Tri-Cities, our whole city was different now, too.

So everything I put on these days felt like it belonged to some previous incarnation of me. One who hadn't killed a fae - or kissed one, either.

The doorbell rang, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I grabbed my purse and hurried downstairs so Tad wouldn't be stuck alone in the front hall with my dad.

As of last week, Tad and Zee weren't living with us anymore. Unfortunately. Now that all the beef between Zee and the Gray Lords had been sorted out, and the Tri-Cities had become a neutral zone, Zee was no longer required to live on the reservation. So he and Tad had moved back into their old house, which apparently Zee had never sold.

Which I knew was a good thing for them, especially in the long run. And my dad definitely approved of it, given the recent developments between me and Tad. But I'd been a little bummed about no longer having constant access to Tad. At least until I realized he was going to use "hanging out with Aiden" as an excuse to come over and see me practically every day.

To be fair, we actually _did_ spend a lot of time hanging out with Aiden. The two-thousand-year-old kid still had a lot to learn about the modern world, and no no way I was leaving it up to Tad and the pack to be his sole source of education. Sometimes Izzy even came over and helped. You know, to lend more of a female perspective on modern times.

Aiden claimed to dislike our tutoring - "You two are always _laughing_ at me," he'd pout, and Izzy would say, " _With_ you, Aiden. We're definitely laughing with you." - but secretly I was beginning to think he had kind of a crush on Izzy. He never left when she was there. Unlike when it was just me, Tad, and Aiden; sometimes Aiden would get so sick of us flirting he'd make gagging noises and leave the room.

I couldn't make up my mind whether it was weird for Aiden to have a crush on Izzy because he looked like he was eleven, and was therefore way too young for her, or if it was weird because I knew he actually had a couple of millennia under his belt and was therefore way too old.

As I turned into the front hall, I saw that my fears of Tad being alone with my dad were unfounded. He was standing in the front hall with my dad, Mercy, and Aiden, and even though Tad couldn't have been inside for more than a minute, Aiden had already embroiled him in conversation. My dad was standing there with his arms crossed, exuding power in that quiet Alpha-werewolf way he had. His gaze was directed somewhat menacingly toward Tad, who was either totally unconcerned about my dad's posturing or just really good at pretending he didn't notice.

Mercy caught sight of me first and smiled. "You look great, Jesse," she said.

Tad's head snapped up, totally interrupting his conversation with Aiden. His gaze met mine, and all my jitters felt sort of zapped away by the smile that lit up his face. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said, taking in the sight of Tad all dressed up. For the first time in living memory he was wearing a button-down shirt and what looked like a new pair of jeans. As opposed to his usual uniform of a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that had definitely spent time in a garage somewhere. "What's with the convention in the front hall?" I asked. "Are we having a council of war or something?"

"Just here to see you off," Mercy said lightly, putting a hand on my dad's arm. He relaxed maybe a fraction.

"Have a good time," my dad said. "Be back by ten."

"Dad, it's the weekend. My curfew's midnight."

My dad's eyes were laser-focused on Tad. "Except for tonight. Your curfew's ten."

It took all my willpower not to roll my eyes. I sidled up next to Tad in the hopes my dad would turn his focus on me instead of my date. "The movie doesn't start until like 8:30. We won't be able to make it home before ten."

"Fine. Ten-thirty."

Okay, now I did roll my eyes. I walked over and gave my dad a kiss on the cheek. "Love you. I'll see you at midnight."

Mercy gave me a hug. "Be safe," she said.

"See you later, pipsqueak," I said, patting Aiden on top of the head. He scowled up at me.

"You know that is not my name."

I gave him a cheeky grin. "Yep," I said, grabbing the front door handle. "Bye!"

Tad made a point of reaching over to hold open the door for me. "We'll be safe," he promised.

"Ten o'clock!" my dad said as the door shut behind us.

I turned back and glared at the door. "Midnight," I said in a perfectly normal voice, because I knew he could still hear me just fine. I thought I heard Mercy's laughter and a low murmur on the other side. I grabbed Tad's hand. "Come on, let's get out of here or we'll be arguing about this all night."

Hands clasped, we raced down the front steps toward the car. Or, I guessed it was probably Zee's car, because it was _nice_. Mustang. Cherry-red. I didn't know what year, but it was definitely wasn't from this decade. I let out a low whistle as we approached. "Nice wheels."

"You like?" Tad said, grinning from ear to ear.

"I mean, you could've picked me up on a moped and I would've been happy, but yeah. It's beautiful. What'd you have to sign over to Zee to borrow it? A kidney?"

"Actually, it's mine," Tad said, sounding a little smug.

"No way," I said, gaping at Tad as he opened the passenger-side door. "How long have you had this?"

"A while, actually. I bought it as a junker when I was fifteen. Mostly just to annoy my dad."

"Why would your dad be annoyed about this car? This car is amazing."

The pride on Tad's face was so adorable it made me want to keep complimenting his car indefinitely. But Tad looked over his shoulder, casting a nervous glance back at the house, and gestured for me to get in. "Why don't we get out of here and I'll tell you the story?"

"Okay," I said, biting back a smile. Well, at least I wasn't the only one feeling a little jittery.

I got in and Tad shut my door for me, then jogged around the front of the car to slide into the driver's seat.

Confession time: I'd always found the whole opening-car-doors-for-girls thing kind of annoying. Mostly because it's so inefficient. Holding a normal door open, sure. What was the point in me sitting around waiting for somebody to operate a door handle when I was perfectly capable of getting in and out of a car on my own?

But the way Tad did it made it feel like he wasn't just doing it as an empty gesture. It felt like he was doing it because he wanted to take care of me, and that brought a whole rush of warm and fluttery feelings that made me feel like the whole car-door thing wasn't such a stupid form of chivalry after all.

Tad cranked the engine, and his Mustang roared to life. A nice, throaty sound. He shot a smile over at me. "You ready?"

I grinned back, clicking my seatbelt into place. "Let's peel this baby out and give my dad a heart attack." I was pretty sure the roar of the engine was loud enough that my dad couldn't overhear. Like eighty-five percent sure.

But Tad just quirked an eyebrow at me and said, "Not on your life." I made a face at him as we pulled away from the house.

"All right, grandpa. Putz-putz-putz. Let's just drive the speed limit all the way there."

"Yes. And all the way back," Tad agreed. "Unless you want your dad to forbid me from ever going anywhere alone with you again. Then we can drive as fast as you want."

"Hmm," I said. "You're sounding pretty confident over there. Who said there's gonna be a second date?"

"Ha. Who are you kidding? You're gonna come on a second date just to see my car again."

I couldn't help laughing as we rounded the curve that took us out of sight of the house, and then it was just the two of us alone.

"Do you think your dad was serious?" Tad said. "About getting you back by ten?"

"Pffbt. No. My curfew's midnight on the weekends, as long as he knows where I am and who I'm with. We agreed on that a long time ago."

"He sounded serious."

"Did you hear Mercy say my curfew was ten o'clock?"

"No."

"Then it's midnight."

A smile crept across Tad's face. "Fair enough."

"So tell me about this car," I said, patting the dashboard. "Why'd it piss your dad off?"

"It's not German," Tad said. "Dad doesn't like working on American cars. Says they're put together wrong."

I laughed again. "Well, I guess that makes sense. I never really thought about it before, but he does own a Volkswagen shop.

"Did," Tad said, as we turned onto the main road. "It's Mercy's now."

"True. I hope she gets it up and running again soon. I can tell she misses it."

"Yeah," Tad said. He tried to sound casual, but something in his tone made me look over. I recognized the sudden tightness in his expression and frowned.

"Tad, you don't feel guilty about that, do you?"

"What? No," Tad said tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "Although, I mean, it was pretty much my fault the place got wrecked."

"What?" I said. "Tad, you were fighting a _lava monster_. I'm pretty sure it was the lava's fault."

Tad shrugged, fiddling with the A/C. "I guess wherever we fought would've been totally wrecked."

"Yeah," I agreed. And then, because he clearly wasn't going to say it, I added, "But it still sucks that you were one of the people who had to wreck your dad's old shop." I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.

To my surprise, Tad grabbed my hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing the back of it.

"Let's talk about something else," he said.

"Okay. Um...how about spelunking?"

" _Spelunking_?" Tad said. "Have you been spending a lot of time in caves lately that I'm unaware of?"

"No. It was just the first thing that popped into my head."

"I think you need to get your head checked."

Now I whacked him on the shoulder. "Fine. _You_ pick the topic, if you're going to be picky."

"All right. I choose you," Tad said.

"Me? What about me?"

Tad took his eyes off the road for a second to look at me. I couldn't tell if it was his gaze or his words, but a flush went to my cheeks and a shiver ran down my spine as he said, "Everything."

* * *

As it turned out, _everything_ was a pretty good summary of what we talked about. Tad and I had known each other for almost a decade, but until these past few weeks we hadn't spent much time together, or talked about anything other than surface stuff. We had a lot of ground to cover.

And once we got to the restaurant, it occurred to us that since we were both connected to Mercy, we shared a lot of the same stories - but with completely different perspectives. So we spent pretty much all of dinner comparing notes, piecing together various Mercy adventures that we'd both seen unfold from afar. I'd been purposely sheltered for a lot of it, and Tad had been away at college for most of it. But, to my very great annoyance, Tad seemed to know a _lot more_ than I did about almost every Mercy adventure. Because, unlike with me, neither Mercy nor Zee had felt the need to filter what they said to him.

So over a giant pizza and an unnecessary amount of appetizers, I was finally able to fill in some gaps that had been bugging me for years. Such as how exactly Mercy had managed to defeat a river monster with a walking stick. And what all had gone on the first time Mercy had met her real dad, aka Coyote.

Tad also told me the story of how Mercy had ended up working in Zee's shop. Considering Zee had always been very nice to me (in his grumpy old man sort of way), it was beyond amusing to learn that Zee had been so opposed to working with Mercy that he'd fired her every day for like a month. Tad had to keep hiring her back until Zee caved.

No wonder Tad felt so awful about the shop. Zee may have been the one fixing cars, but Tad had clearly been the one running everything. That was back when I knew who Tad was, but hadn't known him or Mercy especially well.

And, according to Tad, that was the time in Mercy's life when everything was pretty quiet and normal. Aside from her being a coyote shifter working as a mechanic for an ancient iron-kissed fae, of course.

Part of the reason I didn't have a ton of memories of Mercy's relative normal-ness was because my family was blowing apart apart with my parents' divorce. By the time I _really_ got to know Mercy, it seemed like her life (and my dad's life, by association) was constantly on fire. So I'd had to become a master genius spy detective to figure out what was actually going on in my dad's life.

"Nobody told me anything," I said, pulling a piece of pepperoni off my pizza and popping it into my mouth. "And I mean _anything_. Even when I knew for sure something was going on, my dad always told me not to worry about it. Like _that_ was gonna reassure me," I said, rolling my eyes. "For a long time, the only person who told me actual facts was Mercy, and even then I still had to do a lot of connect-the-dots for myself. I mean, I still kind of have to do that. But at least now I have more sources of information. Did you know my dad forbid most of the pack from even being in the same room with me until I was like fifteen?"

"What?" Tad said, pulling apart a breadstick and dipping a chunk of it in garlic sauce. "Why'd he do that?"

"Fatherly paranoia, I guess." I shrugged. "I personally don't think any of the pack would have hurt me. But I guess now I can see his point. There were things I didn't understand when I was younger. Like how tenuous the pack hierarchy was at one point."

"I think I remember something about Mercy worrying that Darryl was trying to take over the pack at one point."

"Yep. That was a fun one," I muttered. Tad gave me a curious look, so I took a deep breath and said, "That was the one where I got kidnapped."

"Oh, right. That one," Tad said flatly, a dark look crossing his face. I realized this was something else Tad and I shared. We both, unfortunately, knew what it felt like to be locked up and held against your will.

I stretched my hand across the table and Tad took it, curling his hand around mine. His expression turned pained as he gave my hand a squeeze, and I knew that this was one thing we both wished we did not have in common.

"How are we doing over here?"

I jumped in surprise. It was our waitress, stopping by to check on us. I'd forgotten we were in a restaurant.

Tad recovered more quickly than I did. "We're doing great, thanks," he said, giving our waitress, a nice older lady, his most charming smile.

"Did we leave any room for dessert?" the waitress asked.

Tad looked over at me. "Actually, we should probably head over to the - oh, crap," I said, checking the time on my phone.

"What?" Tad said.

"We totally missed the movie. It's like nine o'clock already."

"What? No way," Tad said, and I held up the phone so he could see.

We looked at each other and started laughing.

"Whoops," I said, my cheeks flushing slightly. "Now what?"

"Well...do you want dessert?" Tad said, gesturing at the waitress, who was patiently standing there and waiting like we weren't wasting her time.

"Um...no, actually. I think I'm good."

Tad nodded. "Just the check then, please."

The waitress had come prepared. "Whenever you're ready," she said, and set the check down before whisking our empty plates away.

Tad grabbed the check before I could even peek at it. He tucked a couple bills inside, and tossed it back on the table with a sigh of relief. "Well, there it is. The last vestiges of hot dog man, vanquished!"

A smile quirked my lips. "We could go half and half on that, you know."

"What? Don't be ridiculous. I told you. This is a REAL date."

His indignation was kind of adorable. I attempted to mask my reaction to it by saying, "Okay."

Tad gave me a look like he thought I might argue further. When I didn't, his expression relaxed and he said, "Well, what do you want to do now? Seeing as we're totally missing the movie."

I shrugged, biting my lip, even though I knew exactly what I wanted. "I don't care," I said, and lifted my gaze to his. "I just want to be alone with you."

* * *

In the car, Tad offered me a peppermint. I took it, and tried to tell my heart to calm the eff down as I popped it in my mouth. But the _thwomp-thwomp-thwomp_ persisted as we pulled away from the pizza joint. Because we were both sucking on peppermints. We both wanted to get the taste of pepperoni and garlic out of our mouths. We both wanted...

I twisted my purse strap between my fingers and told myself to get a grip. It wasn't like we'd never made out before, for Pete's sake.

But...we'd never been alone like this before. Even when we were out in the woods, we'd always been within walking distance of the house. And it had never been in the context of a date.

I cleared my throat. "So where are we going?"

"I told you. I know a place," Tad said mysteriously.

"A place where you take all your girls?"

"Nah. Just Lola," he said.

"Lola?" I said, raising my eyebrows. I didn't know anyone named Lola, and I was surprised at the sudden pang of jealousy that went through me.

"Yep," Tad said, patting the dashboard fondly. "Lola."

I let out a relieved laugh. "You named your car Lola?"

"Sure. Why, doesn't she look like a Lola?"

"I guess. I just didn't peg you as a car-namer, that's all."

"Don't listen to her, Lola," Tad whispered to his dashboard. "She doesn't understand." He glanced over to see my reaction, and caught my bewildered look. "You don't _name_ a car," he explained. "A car just...has a name. If you really get to know it, you'll find out what the name is."

"Ah, I see," I said, even though mostly what I saw was that Tad was a huge dork. "Did Zee pass along this car wisdom to you?"

"No. He thinks I'm crazy. All his names for cars are Old German curse words."

"Ooh, can you teach me some of those?"

"Maybe later," Tad said, and reached over to take my hand. He laced his fingers through mine. Warmth shot up my arm and straight to my brain, bursting into that familiar tingly sensation that made it hard to focus. On anything but Tad, anyway.

"So...speaking of Lola," I managed. "Why was she in storage?"

"I couldn't bring her to college with me. The engine's okay, but not good enough for a cross-country trek yet."

"Uh-oh. We're not in danger of being stranded, are we?"

"Nah. I've been tuning her up the past couple days. She's good for city driving, but if I really wanted to take her long-distance, I'd need a new transmission."

"And I'm guessing that'd be expensive?"

"For this model? Very. But that's all part of the ten-year plan."

"You have a ten-year plan?"

"Sure. Although I got a little sidetracked, so I might have to bump it to a fifteen-year plan to give me some wiggle room."

"Probably smart. Life has a way of being unpredictable," I said softly, tracing the back of his hand.

"No kidding," Tad said, glancing over at me. He gave my hand a gentle squeeze and we fell silent for a while. I leaned back into my seat, feeling happy and full, and just listened to the radio as Tad drove out of town and into the country. Eventually, he turned onto a dirt road I'd never noticed before. It led to a little clearing that overlooked the river.

In the distance, I could see the stretch of highway where Cable Bridge should have been. Only now, instead of the shape and lights of the bridge to mark its spot, all I could see were the blinking red lights of the barricades on either side of the river, where the roads now came to a dead end above the rushing water.

Tad let go of my hand to shift the car into park. He killed the engine, and the headlights and the radio went off with it. Then it was just us alone together in the dark. I could hear the sound of crickets, and I had my gaze directed toward the wide, dark expanse of the river below us, but in truth all of my senses were attuned to the shape and radiating warmth of the person sitting right next to me. I could feel his gaze moving over me like a touch.

"Jesse..." he said quietly. His fingers gently grazed my arm, and as though I'd been waiting for a cue, I turned and grabbed for him. I latched onto the front of his shirt and dragged him the rest of the way toward me, welcoming his mouth as it collided with mine. He tasted a little bit like peppermint, but mostly he just felt like Tad. The sensation of his tongue meeting mine sent spirals of heat racing through me, and I wasn't sure if it was him or me who let out a quiet groan as the kiss got deeper. I leaned closer, wanting more, and-

Jerked to a stop. I still had my seatbelt on.

I fumbled for the latch, and when it released I flung the stupid seatbelt behind me - Tad had to let go of me for a second so I could get rid of the thing - and then I twisted around, kneeling on the seat so I could kiss Tad full on without having to strain for a good angle. Tad's hands went into my hair, and we kissed until I was half-senseless; until all the worry and angst and fear I'd been carrying around for the last few weeks felt like they'd been drained out of me, and I filled up again on heat and sweetness and desire.

We broke apart again as Tad took off his own seatbelt, and then he grabbed me by the waist and dragged me right over into his lap. Since neither of us were interested in breaking off the kiss long enough to get properly situated, I ended up laying on the horn a couple times with my butt. I giggled into his mouth as he fumbled for something with his left hand, and then suddenly his seat leaned all the way back and I went tumbling on top of him. We both stretched out, and my legs tangled with his as he hitched me up and our lips found each other again.

We kissed for I don't know how long. Long enough for us to fall into a slow, deep rhythm. Long enough for my lips to feel puffy. Long enough for us to get so wrapped up in one another that all I could taste, all I could sense, all I could think about was him.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Thank you for your reviews! Have I mentioned they make my day? It's the best. For serious. Also, SORRY it keeps taking so long to post. I'm working two jobs at the moment so please bear with me. More to come!

Chapter 11

I woke with Tad's arms around me. It was dark, and I felt stiff from lying at a weird angle, but I didn't remember why until I peeled my eyes open and realized we were still in Tad's car.

"Tad," I murmured. "What time is it?"

Tad gave a little mumble and shifted underneath me, his lips brushing my forehead. I couldn't tell if this was intentional or not, but it kind of made my heart feel like it was going to melt.

"Tad," I said again, attempting to sit up.

Tad's response was to tighten his arms around me, jostling me around until my head was tucked under his chin. Once he had me in place, he let out a contented sigh and went right back to deep, even breathing.

Okay, now my heart felt like it was going to _burst_. But I couldn't get rid of the nagging worry that had sprung up in my chest. "My curfew," I said, more urgently. "If I'm late, my dad'll be pissed."

"Wha-?" Tad said groggily. "What about your dad?"

Tad let me sit up this time, and I fished my phone out of my purse. My eyes widened at the display. "Shit. _Shit_!"

"What? What is it?"

"It's 11:59. Drive - DRIVE!" I said, scrambling over to the passenger seat. Tad jerked upright, yanking his seat back into place.

"Shit," he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. Apparently adrenaline had taken care of his drowsiness, because he looked perfectly alert now as he cranked the engine and threw the car into reverse. We both buckled up as he turned around and roared back down the dirt road. When we reached the main road, Tad peeled out.

I peered anxiously at my phone. 12:04. _Au_ _gh_ _._ But after Tad whipped a little too wildly around the first curve, I said, "Don't go too fast. Dad'll be annoyed that I'm late, but if we got a ticket or something, he'd never let me drive anywhere with you again." I said it kind of jokingly, but we both knew I was serious. Tad eased up the gas.

"I'm sorry, Jesse," he said, scrubbing a hand over his face again. "I didn't mean to-"

"Don't," I said sharply. "Don't be sorry about any of it. I'm not."

Tad glanced over at me, then grabbed my hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it. We drove back mostly in silence. I texted my dad to let him know I was on the way, and had gotten back a terse "OK." By the time we got back, it was 12:27.

I inspected my hair and face to make sure I didn't look like I'd been doing anything inappropriate. Not that I thought we _had_ been doing anything inappropriate. But I figured the more put-together I looked when I walked into the house, the more appeased my dad would be.

Tad pulled to a stop in front of the house and I leaned over to give him a quick kiss good-bye. "I'll call you tomorrow," I said.

"I think that's my line," Tad said, and got out of the car.

I climbed out of the passenger seat. "Um, maybe it's better if you don't walk me to the front door?"

Tad gave me a look like I was being ridiculous. "I promised I'd get you safely home." He took my hand again as we went up the front walk. My dad and Mercy were nowhere in sight, but when we reached the front stoop, Tad turned to the closed door and said, "I'm sorry I brought her home late, Mr. Hauptman. It was my fault."

"No it wasn't," I said, scowling up at Tad. "We just lost track of time."

Tad gave me a wry look, but he didn't argue. He just put his free hand to the side of my face and leaned down to give me a gentle kiss. It was a super chaste, parent-approved kind of kiss, but it still sank down into my toes, making me feel warm and tingly all over.

"Good night, Jesse," he said.

"Night," I said, feeling strangely floaty. Tad waited on the stoop until I'd gone into the house, and then I leaned back against the front door, waiting until I'd heard Tad's car drive off and my heart had stopped pounding crazy-hard in my chest before pushing myself upright and making my way upstairs.

My dad was waiting for me in the hall. To my relief, he didn't look like he was about to go all angry-wolf on me.

"Hey, Dad. Sorry I'm late."

He just nodded and looked me over like he was inspecting me for damage.

"Tad was a complete gentleman," I informed him. Never mind that my dad and I probably had different definitions of _gentleman_.

My dad took a deep breath, then let out a sigh that had a little bit of a growl to it, which I took to mean he'd scented Tad all over me. But I wasn't about to apologize for smelling like Tad, considering I'd been riding around in his car all night.

"This is going to keep going?" my dad said finally.

"Yes," I said. Or at least, it had better.

I didn't think my dad _actuall_ _y_ objected to me dating Tad, especially considering he'd given his permission and all. It was more that - even though we'd gone through this when I dated Gabriel - he was still unwilling to accept that I was old enough to date at all.

But hey, what kind of daughter would I be if I didn't give him a chance to feel all protective and fatherly every once in a while?

"Next time, don't be late," my dad said.

"I won't," I said cheerfully, and gave him a peck on the cheek before disappearing into my room.

I waited for my dad's door to click shut down the hall and all my noise-canceling fans to power up before flopping on my bed with a happy sigh and letting all the emotions and floaty sensations come flooding back in.

* * *

"Sixteen and a half days," Izzy said. _"Oof._ That's not very many. Any exciting plans for how you're going to spend them?"

"Mostly in denial," I said, taking a sip of my iced chai.

Izzy snorted in amusement. "Well, hopefully Tad has some ideas, then. You guys need to get in some killer dates before he ships back off to Hah-vahd."

"All of our dates are killer," I informed her. "Even the ones where we're literally just sitting around doing nothing." Which, actually, was what we'd done yesterday. We'd brought a blanket and some snacks out into the woods, set ourselves up in a secluded little clearing, and just lazed around all afternoon. There wasn't anything remarkable about it, except that the whole thing had felt super peaceful and kind of perfect.

"Ugh," Izzy said. "Look at you. You guys have only been together for like three weeks and already you're relationship goals."

I shrugged, but I couldn't stop a goofy smile from spreading over my face. I didn't want to get ahead of myself. But Izzy wasn't wrong.

It was possible that everything between us felt so perfect because the weeks preceding our first official date had been so incredibly hard and awful. But it was more than that, too. I could be myself around Tad, in a way I couldn't be around anyone else - not even Izzy. I mean, Izzy was the best, but there were still things she couldn't know, for her own protection.

And the more time I spent around Tad, the more time I _wanted_ to spend with him. Which would have been completely embarrassing to admit, except that Tad clearly had the same problem.

Since our first official date, we'd made excuses to see each other almost every day. If Tad wasn't over at my house after school, then I usually came here to the Bean Counter, where I'd either hang with Izzy or do homework until Tad finished his shift. At which point we'd go hang out and/or make out in his car until it was time for me to go home for dinner.

On days we didn't end up seeing each other, Tad called to say good night, just like he had when he and Zee were out on their not-so-secret mission. I'd curl up on my bed while I talked to him. Sometimes I'd even shut my eyes just so I could focus completely on his voice.

Slowly but surely, I was becoming an addict. A Taddict. It was both pathetic and amazing.

It also meant that when we'd gone on our fourth date a couple weeks ago, Tad's news had been a complete and total heart-rending bummer.

* * *

Our first three dates had involved dinner, lunch, and brunch - "Gotta make sure we have all our meal bases covered," Tad had declared on the third date - so it wasn't until date #4 that we finally made it to the movies.

Theoretically, we both actually wanted to see the action flick we'd chosen. But not long after it started, Tad decided to be a complete and total distraction. He pulled up the armrest between our seats and put his arm around me, tugging me close. At first, he seemed content with just having me tucked up against him. But then he started doing things like playing with my hair, or tracing his fingers up and down my arm. At one point, totally out of the blue, he brought one of my hands to his mouth and kissed my fingertips.

I had no idea what had gotten into him. And while I wasn't super into PDA (everything got back to the pack eventually), we were alone enough in the mostly-empty theater, and I was keyed up enough from the way he'd been touching me that when he ducked his head to kiss me, I leaned into him, a shudder running through me as his mouth found mine.

"I thought you actually wanted to see this movie," I whispered when we broke apart.

"I do," he whispered back, tracing a finger down my cheek. "But I want to do this too."

He tipped my chin up and kissed me again. And because we were in the middle of a long, noisy action sequence, I let myself get lost in it. Maybe a little bit too lost. I was halfway in his lap by the time we broke apart again.

"We're gonna get kicked out," I said, breathing hard, and scooted back into my seat.

"You think making out is the worst thing that's gone on in this theater?"

"Ew. Please don't elaborate on that," I said. Somebody shushed us, and I sank back into my seat, folding my arms across my chest in an attempt to keep my hands to myself.

I turned my focus back to the movie. Or I tried to, anyway. I'd halfway managed to figure out what was going on plot-wise when Tad put his arm around me again and pulled me snug against his side. Well...fine. I hadn't really been able to concentrate on the movie while I'd been wondering if he was going to do that again, anyway.

He didn't try to make out with me again. But his thumb kept making slow circles against my shoulder, and toward the end of the movie, he started tracing the shape of one of my hands with his free one. His fingers ran up and down the length of mine until I felt like I had an electric current running up my arm, and then I twisted my hand around, twining my fingers through his.

It was a good thing the movie kind of sucked, because between all the distractions and wondering what on earth was up with Tad, I only caught about half of it. I was almost relieved when the movie ended and we spilled out of the theater, because now I could finally ask Tad what was going on.

"Do you wanna grab a milkshake?" Tad asked, before I got the chance.

"Sure."

We walked to this little ice cream stand down the street, where Tad was uncharacteristically quiet as we waited in line. He just held my hand, tracing his thumb over my knuckles over and over again.

I gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "Hey. What're you thinking about?"

"Milkshakes. You. Mostly milkshakes."

I rolled my eyes. "Glad to know where I stand in the scheme of things."

"Well, it's pretty hard to compete with frozen dairy," Tad said, and dropped a kiss on my nose.

We reached the front of the line and ordered. While we were waiting for our shakes, I said, "Seriously, though. I can tell something's up."

Tad was quiet for a moment before he said, "Milkshakes now. Talk later."

"Okay."

We grabbed our shakes to-go, and then Tad drove us out to his secret spot overlooking the river. It was far enough away from town that I'd finished my cherry-cheesecake shake on the drive out there. Which meant that once Tad had parked and killed the engine, I was able to turn my full attention to whatever was bugging him. I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned toward him, resting my cheek against the headrest. "So...what's up?"

Tad unbuckled his seatbelt, too - apparently we'd both learned that lesson from last time - and stared out over the river, nervously tapping the steering wheel.

"Tad?" I said.

He finally looked over at me. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then instead he snaked his hand behind my head and dragged me toward him. I wanted to talk about whatever was bugging him, but I also didn't resist as his lips landed on mine. The kiss was hot and fierce, filled with a desperation I didn't understand.

The situation might have escalated quickly, except I broke away and said, "Tad. Seriously. What's going on?"

"I got into Harvard," he blurted out. "I mean - I'm going back to Harvard. They agreed to readmit me."

"Oh," I said dumbly. "When?"

"Next month," he said, resting his forehead against mine. "Spring quarter."

"Oh," I said again, and my heart sank all the way down into my toes.

So that was what tonight had been about. All the shenanigans in the movie theater, the epic kiss just now in the car...Tad was saying good-bye.

I pulled away, forcing him to disentangle his hand from my hair, and shrank into my seat. "Well...congrats," I said, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat.

"Jesse..." Tad said, sounding pained. "I'm sorry. I didn't think it'd be so soon."

"When did you think it would be, then? The fall?"

"At the earliest," Tad said, running an agitated hand through his hair. "But they said considering the circumstances of me leaving" - aka an unforeseen magical incident, against which I guessed the administration did not want to appear prejudiced - "they'd admit me back for spring quarter. And then if I came back for summer term, I'd only be half a year behind. So..."

"So you'll be gone all summer too," I said flatly.

I'd always known Tad would go back to school eventually. And of course in the fall I'd be going off to school, too. But even knowing all that, it didn't stop my gut from clenching or my eyes from stinging. I _hated_ this conversation. I'd already had it once with Gabriel. I had no desire to go through it again.

"Jesse, I'm sorry," Tad said. "I really thought we'd have more time."

"So what was your plan, then?" I bit out. "Date me until the fall and dump me then?"

"What? No," Tad said, looking startled. "Jesse, I don't want to break things off with you."

"Because if you think - wait, what?" I said, blinking at him. "You don't?"

Tad looked at me I was crazy. "Of course I don't. Jesse, I would never have started this with you if I didn't think it was going to go anywhere."

"But...you just said you were sorry. You said you thought we'd have more time."

Tad's eyes widened. "I didn't mean it like _that._ I just meant I'm sorry the timing sucks." I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed. "Although...Jesse, if you didn't want to keep things going, I'd understand."

"Me?" I blurted out. "Why would _I_ want to cut things off?"

"Because we've only been on three dates and long distance sucks?"

Well. Okay. "But we haven't only been on three dates, Tad. We've known each other for like a decade."

"Yeah," Tad said, scrubbing his hands over his face. "It's just...Boston is _far,_ Jesse. And it wouldn't just be long distance for a few months. You're going off to school in the fall, too. And then it will be at least two years before-"

I put my fingers to his lips to shut him up. "I know," I said. "But...if you don't want to end things with me and I don't want to end things with you, then let's not talk about anything else. Let's just figure out how to make it work."

When I dropped my hands from Tad's mouth, he said, "It wasn't my idea, you know."

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. "To go back to school?"

"Yeah. I mean, I do want to go back, but to be honest...I haven't really been thinking about it. Not lately, anyway. My dad's the one who reached out to Harvard. He got them to make the exception."

" _Zee_ did this?" I said incredulously. I knew Zee was capable of a lot of things, but I'd never pictured him as a meddler.

"Yeah. He can be kind of funny about time."

"Time?" I said, scrunching my eyebrows together. "How so?"

Tad let out a deep breath. "Okay. So my dad is basically immortal, right?"

"Sure," I said. "I have one of those, too."

Tad gave me a wry look. Yet another thing we had in common. Not that my dad was likely to live as long as Zee, what with the crazy-violent werewolf lifestyle and all. But if he and Mercy kept outsmarting their enemies, my dad would almost certainly outlive _me_. Something I tried not to think too hard about.

Tad cleared his throat. "Right. Well...I think something about my dad having lived so long makes him worry about me not having enough time. Like if I'm not careful, I won't have enough of it to do everything I want to do."

"Ah," I said. "I guess mortal lifespans must feel pretty short compared to Zee's." I didn't know how old Zee actually was, but I was pretty sure it was in the millennia. "So I guess he wanted to make sure you don't miss out on your youth, or something?"

"Yeah. Something like that. I think he also feels guilty I got dragged away from school in the first place. Not that it was his fault. But I think this is his way of trying to make amends for lost time."

I mulled this over before saying, "Well, for what it's worth, I agree with your dad."

Tad's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You do?"

"Yes. I mean, I'm not saying I want you to be thousands of miles away, but you shouldn't have been dragged into any of this. You deserve to go back and live your life."

"My life isn't just in Boston, Jesse," he said quietly, in a way that made my cheeks flush.

"You know what I mean. College is where you're supposed to be right now."

"Yeah. I know. I guess it just felt kind of nice for once, being able to work and lay low without anyone coming after us. But Dad could see I was getting too comfortable here. Every time I thought about going back to school, it felt like something I was happy to put off. Dad made me realize the longer I put it off, the harder it will be to go back."

"Why?" I said curiously. "I mean, I get wanting to take a break from all the craziness. But I know school's important to you. And...college is supposed to be fun, right?"

"It is. Mostly, anyway."

"Wow. Glowing recommendation."

Tad gave a quiet laugh. "It's kind of a long story. I don't want to get into it just now."

"Okay," I said, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. "But for the record...if I'm going to be your girlfriend, I'd really like to hear it sometime."

"Girlfriend?" Tad echoed. To my relief, a smile spread on his face.

"Yep," I said. "I mean, I'm not saying we have to label it, but if you're going to be thousands of miles away and we're going to keep carrying on with this, then it would be nice if we at least-"

Tad cut me off by kissing me. My heart was pounding like crazy, and I couldn't tell if it was from excitement or fear. Maybe a little of both. Because Boston _was_ far. And I was still in high school, and Tad would be off again soon, surrounded by college girls, and if this kiss meant what I thought it meant, then our relationship was officially about ten seconds old -

But as he buried his hands in my hair, I realized I wasn't worried about any of the things I might have been worried about with somebody else. Tad wasn't going to mess me around. Not just because of the threat of my dad inevitably tearing him limb from limb, but because that just wasn't the kind of person he was. He was brave and kind and fiercely loyal; lethal in a fight; smart and dependable and true to his word. I trusted him. And I _wanted_ him.

So when we broke apart, I couldn't keep a goofy grin from spreading across my face. "So I take it that's a _yes_ kiss?"

"That's a _whatever label you want to slap on me, I'm in_ kiss," Tad said.

"Oh, reeeeally?" I said. "What if I want to call you Fancy Pants? Or Sugar Lips?"

"Those aren't labels. Those are nicknames," Tad pointed out. "And I would like to protest that I do not have fancy pants. My pants are completely normal."

I reached over and put my hand on his leg, squeezing his knee on the pretense of testing the fabric on his jeans. "Okay, fair point. So does this mean you don't object to Sugar Lips?"

"Only if you don't object to Butter Tongue."

" _Butter Tongue?_ " I sputtered.

"No Butter Tongue? Okay, how about Candy Neck? Or Sweetie Loins?"

I let out a shriek of laughter. " _Sweetie Loins_? Okay, that's it. You are officially fired from coming up with any nicknames, ever."

"I disagree. I think my nicknames for you are super accurate," Tad said, and then he ducked his head and pressed a slow, hot kiss to my neck. "See?" he murmured against my skin, making my breath hitch. "Even better than candy."

He nuzzled my neck as his hand trailed down my side, squeezing my hip.

"Um, you are _not_ testing out Sweetie Loins right now," I protested.

"Are you sure about that?" Tad said. His fingers skimmed the bare skin just above my waistband. The thought of his fingers dipping lower made me ache in a way that kind of scared me, so I batted his hand away.

"Yes, Sugar Lips," I said, and turned my head to kiss him again.

Tad gave a quiet groan, and then the hand that had been at my waist was splayed against my back, rubbing up and down my spine as we kissed, long and hot and deep. When we broke apart, he curled one hand in a fist around my hair, breathing hard as he rested his forehead against mine.

"This is going to be the worst part," Tad said. "Not being able to see you every day. Or touch you."

"We'll just have to invent a teleporter. Easy fix," I said.

He gave a quiet laugh. "I'll get right on that."

* * *

"Can I tell you a secret?" I said to Izzy.

"Always," Izzy said. She nudged her empty mocha mug aside so she could lean conspiratorially across the table.

I glanced across the Bean Counter to make sure Tad was still occupied with drink orders, then turned back to Izzy. "Sooo...I might have, kind of, sort of applied last-minute to a couple of schools in Boston."

"WHAT?" Izzy shrieked, causing several people to look our direction. I gave her a glare, and she lowered her voice, saying, "Sorry. I mean - _what?_ When?"

"A few weeks ago," I said, fiddling with the straw in my iced chai. "Like, literally on the last day of the deadline. I re-used one of my essays and copied my recommendation letters, and...boom. Suddenly I'm a prospective student."

"So, wait. Where'd you apply? Harvard?"

"No. That wasn't an option. But Boston College was still open. And Boston University."

"Wow. This is crazy. And kind of awesome."

"Izzy, it's not anything yet. I don't even know if I'll get in."

"You will," Izzy said with confidence. "You have to get into at least _one_ of them."

"I really don't," I said. "But even if I do...Iz, do you think it would be stupid to go?"

"To Boston? Well, that depends."

"On?"

"On whether you'll regret going if you and Tad break up."

I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it again. Finally, I said, "So you don't think it's stupid to want to go in the first place?"

"Nope," Izzy said, without hesitation.

"Really? Even though I'm literally only interested because my boyfriend lives there?"

Izzy cocked her head at me. "Look, Jesse, don't take this the wrong way, but you are the least decided person I've ever met when it comes to colleges. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but you don't have a dream school. You don't know what you want to major in. The only thing I've really heard you talk about is how relieved you'll be to start over someplace new where everybody doesn't immediately know you're related to a werewolf."

I dropped my head into my hands. "Augh. So many truth bombs."

"Not trying to stress you out. I'm just saying...if your only clear goals are to get a degree and get away from the Freak Zone, why _not_ go to school in Boston? Yeah, it's all the way across the country and it'll be expensive going out of state. But honestly, Jesse? Just now, when you told me you secretly applied to schools in Boston - that is the most excited I've seen you when you've talked about college. Ever."

I lifted my head to peer at Izzy. "You make many great points. But isn't it pathetic that only schools I'm excited about are schools that are near my boyfriend, who I've been going out with less than a month?"

Izzy shrugged. "If it were somebody you'd only known for less than a month, then yeah, maybe. But it's _Tad_. You've known him forever. And anyway, I stick to what I said originally: if you think you'll hate Boston if you're not with Tad, then you need to rethink it. But if it's a place you can see yourself living and enjoying school, regardless of Tad, then why not go?"

* * *

Which was how, a month and a half later, I found myself on a plane ride out to Boston with my dad and Mercy.

I'd gotten into Boston University, and since my dad absolutely refused to let me commit to someplace I hadn't seen in person, we were making an official visit. I could tell my dad wasn't thrilled, and actually had the sneaking suspicion he was going to try to use the visit to demonstrate all the ways I'd be better off going to school back home.

But the important thing was that we were going. The countdown to see Tad was now in hours instead of weeks.

And I'd have the chance to take Izzy's advice out for a spin. If I didn't love Boston, if I couldn't see myself living there, then maybe it wasn't worth going.

But I really, really, really hoped it was.


End file.
